


Man of Constant Sorrow

by CatrionaMac



Series: Man of Constant Sorrow - AU [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Complete, Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1443808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatrionaMac/pseuds/CatrionaMac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's six years after the Cordyceps outbreak ended civilization as we know it. After spending a few hard years as hunters, Joel and Tommy head west, but things don't go as they planned, leaving Tommy dead and Joel on the run. As Joel is wandering in the west Texas desert, near death, he is rescued by a mysterious young woman with red hair and green eyes. Her terrible secret will change his life. </p><p>Alternate Universe: What would happen if Ellie was born before the outbreak, and Joel headed west instead of to Boston?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger

_I am a man of constant sorrow_  
 _I've seen trouble all my days_  
 _I bid farewell to old Kentucky_  
 _The place where I was born and raised_

_For six long years I've been in trouble_  
 _No pleasure here on earth I find_  
 _For in this world I'm bound to ramble_  
 _I have no friends to help me now_

 - from _A Man of Constant Sorrow_ , traditional American folk song

* * *

Joel’s horse died at noon.

He was leading it up a narrow path up a series of endless rocky ridges, somewhere south of Balmorhea, when it simply stopped and refused to move any more. Joel cursed and hauled on the reins, but the poor creature was used up. It groaned once, a deep, rattling groan, and collapsed on the ground, its sweaty flanks utterly still.

Joel sat down on the trail and rested his elbows on his knees, licking his dry, chapped lips with a tongue that felt two sizes too big. He was dizzy from the heat and dehydration, but he’d drunk the last swallow of warm, flat water from his canteen the previous night, and he knew what he needed to do next. Kneeling next to the horse’s head, he drew the Bowie knife he wore at his hip out of its sheath and sliced down through skin and muscle into the jugular vein, cupping his hand under the horse’s neck to catch the sluggish flow of blood. He drank as much as he could, gagging at the salty taste and the thick texture, knowing that if he didn’t, he would probably be dead before this time tomorrow. When he could stomach no more, he sat down on the rocky ground and leaned back against the horse’s carcass, taking deep breaths and fighting the urge to vomit.

It didn’t do any good; Joel’s stomach heaved once, twice, and then he was on his hands and knees and throwing up everything he’d just drunk, spattering the dusty rocks with blood that joined the slowly growing pool spreading out from the horse’s body.

He collapsed back against the horse, too weak for the moment to even try to find shelter from the relentless sun.

“God damn it.” His voice was so hoarse he barely recognized it as his own, and he realized with a start that he hadn’t spoken out loud since Odessa, since he’d buried Tommy near that little farmhouse and moved on alone. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, he was spectacularly shitty company these days.

He closed his eyes. He could stay right here, he realized. Just not get up again. The temptation washed over him like a cool breeze. He was so goddamned tired. By his map he was still miles away from any water, and that was if he was even headed in the right direction, which he doubted. These ridges were like a fucking maze, and he’d lost sight of the Guadalupe mountains as a means to orient himself hours ago.

They’d headed west, after leaving that bad scene with their hunter crew in Philadelphia, how many months ago? Joel couldn’t remember; time had started to shift and blend unpredictably after Tommy…

They should have skirted around Odessa. He’d known it, but their supplies were getting low and they were about to head out into the sparsely populated wide-open spaces of west Texas. They needed to stock up.

Heading west had been Tommy’s idea, but Odessa...that was all Joel. They’d been sniping at each other for days over the wisdom of continuing west. Tommy insisted they keep going, so Joel had been concentrating too much at being pissed off at Tommy, and he’d walked them right into the ambush. They’d used up most of their ammo getting away. Joel hadn’t even known Tommy was hit until they made it to that farmhouse on the outskirts of town and Tommy just suddenly collapsed. By then, it was too late to do anything about it, except hold his brother’s hand while he bled out from the bullet that had ripped into his gut.

Joel hadn’t cried, not then, not while he dug Tommy a shallow grave under a gnarled oak tree, not once in the confusion of days since, but he felt like crying now, and now that there was so little moisture in his body the tears wouldn’t come.

Tommy’s last words to him had been, “Not your fault, Joel.”

Joel leaned back against the warm body of the dead horse, making himself as comfortable as possible. “Told you it was a stupid idea to come west,” he whispered. “Guess I’ll see you again soon, little brother.” _You and Sarah both,_ he thought, as he started to drift off.

“You have to keep going.”

Joel’s eyes flew open again. He sat up and craned his neck around, but saw no one. That voice had been as clear as day, and it sounded so familiar...but no. He was alone, wandering through the west Texas desert with no water, no food, and no horse. He’d come to the end of the line. That voice was just some dream.

He settled back against the horse again and rested his cheek against its smooth hide. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Get up, Dad!”

The voice was as loud as the crack of a bullet, and Joel was halfway to his feet before he even realized what he was doing. “Sarah?” he croaked. He rubbed the watch on his left wrist and cleared his throat. A tiny voice in the corner of his mind reminded him that Sarah was dead, and had been dead for over six years now, but the painful hope that flared in his chest at the sound of her voice overwhelmed all of his senses. “Sarah? Is that you?”

“You have to keep going,” she said again. “It’s not far now.”

Joel’s eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand in them, and his body was whittled down to sinew and bone, but somehow he found the strength to stagger a few steps toward the voice. Toward Sarah. He couldn’t see her, maybe she was around that next bend in the trail, or behind the ridge.

“Come on, Dad. You have to keep fighting,” she said.

“Okay. Okay. I’m comin’.” Joel fought with his exhausted body, forcing his limbs into motion. He took small steps, because that was the only way he could maintain his balance; he was still dizzy with fatigue and dehydration. “I’m comin’, baby girl. Just…just don’t leave me.” His voice cracked.

Her voice whispered in his ear, “I never left you, Daddy.”

Joel put one foot in front of the other, climbing up the rocky path to the top of the ridge.

When he made it to the top and looked down the other side, he saw the sweetest sight he’d ever seen in his life: a tiny stream, carving its way through a deep ravine, and Sarah, kneeling next to it to fill a waterbag, her horse browsing on the gray-green shrubs nearby.

Joel’s heart hammered in his chest as he waved to her. It had been so long since he’d seen her. “Sarah!” His voice came out as nothing more than a croak.

She turned, and Joel could see he’d surprised her. Pride swelled in his chest when she trained the barrel of a pistol on him. His baby girl could take care of herself. She’d recognize him soon enough, after all, she’d been leading him here. “Sarah,” he called again, and started down the ridge.

In his haste he didn’t pay enough attention to his footing, and when his left ankle turned on a loose rock, he went down hard, sliding and rolling the rest of the way down the steep slope. A sharp rock grazed his temple on the way down, and in the burst of pain that followed, even the bright sunshine started to dim and Joel realized he was starting to lose consciousness.

“No…” he moaned as he rolled to a stop at the bottom of the ravine, his fingers just touching the cool water. He was so close, but he’d exhausted his body’s every reserve, and the knock on the head made it impossible for him to force himself to move, even through sheer willpower. His arms and legs felt heavy and rubbery. “Sarah…”

She leaned over him, her face blocking out the sun, and as Joel’s vision faded into blackness, his last thought was to wonder why Sarah’s eyes were green now instead of blue.

* * *

Cool water trickled over his dry lips and filled his mouth. He choked at first, and then sucked greedily at the mouth of the bottle that was being held to his lips.

“Easy,” a voice said. “You’ll make yourself sick if you drink too much.”

Joel’s head was spinning, and he had a splitting headache, and he couldn’t seem to move, but he caught a glimpse of the voice’s owner before the blackness swallowed him again: a young woman with short red hair and green eyes, her pale face sprinkled with freckles.

Not Sarah.

* * *

The next time he woke up, it was dark, but a tiny campfire crackled a few feet away. Joel could smell meat cooking, and his stomach cramped with hunger pains so strong it ripped an involuntary moan from his throat.

“I guess you decided to live, after all.” a shadowy form moved on the other side of the fire, and as she came into the light Joel saw it was the red-haired woman from before. “You want some water?”

Joel tried to say yes, but his throat was too dry. Instead, he nodded. That was when he realized he was lying on his side, trussed up like a turkey with his hands behind his back. The arm he was lying on was numb; he guessed he’d been in this position for a while.

She frowned for a second as if she was considering the logistics of getting the water into his mouth, and then she sighed and hauled him up into a kneeling position. She wasn’t careful about it. Joel grunted in pain as she moved him; every inch of his body ached, his left ankle was swollen, and it felt like he’d cracked a couple ribs in his descent down the hill. His head felt like it was being split with a hammer. She held the bottle of water to his lips and tilted it into his mouth. It was warm and tasted like plastic. Joel thought it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

After he’d drunk his fill, he said, in a voice that was still hoarse, “Thank you.”

She moved away from him again, but stayed in the circle of light from the fire, where she could watch him. “Are you crazy?” she finally said.

It wasn’t the question he expected. “What?”

“I’ve seen it happen, a guy’s all alone out here for too long, kind of goes around the bend. That happen to you?”

“No, I…” Joel remembered how confused he’d been, hearing Sarah’s voice, and amended his answer. “I don’t think so.”

“You want to explain why you’re covered in blood and staggering through my territory like an idiot, with no food or water, mumbling to yourself, then?” Her green eyes gleamed in the firelight.

“Didn't know I was in anyone's territory. I was headed for the mountains, lookin’ for water, but I lost my bearings,” he said. “The blood...it’s my horse’s. When she died, I tried…” Joel trailed off. He didn’t know how this strange woman would react to the news that he’d tried to drink the horse’s blood.

But she had a look of reluctant approval on her face. “You drank her blood to rehydrate. That’s smart, if you can keep it down.”

Joel grimaced. “Yeah, well…”

A flash of sympathy crossed her face, replaced quickly by a stony glare. “You said you were headed to the mountains. Where from?”

Joel kept his mouth shut, mostly through force of habit. He felt like he’d already said too much. He didn’t know how dangerous this woman could be, and he was completely at her mercy, tied up like he was.

Her lips compressed into a grim line. “Fine. Be like that. It’s too bad; I was gonna share my dinner with you, but I don’t feed people I might have to kill later.”

At that, Joel’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in three days, and whatever she was cooking on the little fire smelled so good his mouth would have been watering if he wasn’t still so dehydrated.

“We came through Odessa,” he blurted. “My brother and me. We walked right into an ambush, had to fight our way through to the other side. They...he…” Joel swallowed, his throat tightening at the memory of a shallow grave under an oak tree. “He didn’t make it.”

Her eyes were blank, totally unreadable, when she said, “You ran into that crew in Odessa? The ones with the red bandanas?

“Yeah.” Come to think of it, the bandits that had ambushed him and Tommy had all worn red bandanas tied around their throats.

“How many of them did you kill?” Again, her face was blank, as hard as a marble statue.

Joel hesitated. The wrong answer here might be the end of him, and he was just starting to get used to the idea of living through the night. He decided to be honest. “Ten. Maybe fifteen.”

Her face cracked into a fierce smile. “Good. I hate those assholes.” She moved around behind him and he felt cool metal on his hands; she cut his hands free using his own Bowie knife, and said, “Don’t make any sudden moves. And I’ll hold on to this for now.” She held up Joel’s Bowie knife, examining the edge in the firelight. “You got a name?”

“Joel,” he said, rubbing his wrists.

She settled in on the other side of the fire to tend to the meat that was sizzling on the spit, laying his knife across her knee. “Ellie.”

* * *

When Joel woke up the next morning, he was alone in the little cave that Ellie called home, the ashes of last night’s fire cold and dead beside him. His head and ankle and ribs still throbbed, but he felt more alert and clearheaded than he had in days, thanks to the food and water and a night of uninterrupted sleep.

They hadn’t spoken much more the night before; after Joel got some food in his stomach he’d barely been able to keep his eyes open, and he’d yawned so hugely that when Ellie had told him to just lie down and she’d keep watch, it was a measure of his exhaustion that he took her at her word.

There was a battered PowerBar and a plastic bottle of water next to his head; he guessed Ellie had left it for him to eat when he woke up. He choked the thing down, doing his best to ignore its gummy texture and sickly-sweet taste, washing it down with big swigs of clean water. He’d certainly eaten worse in the past six years.

He tossed the wrapper into the fire ring and stiffly got to his feet, and winced as he put his weight on his left foot. His ankle was swollen, but it felt like a sprain, not a break, and would probably be all right in a few days. A quick search through the cave turned up not much of use; his gun was gone, as was his knife.

When he stepped outside, he found a mare grazing on brush in a makeshift paddock near the cave entrance. She whickered when she saw him and came over to nose his pockets. He stroked her nose and murmured, “Sorry, I don’t have anything for you.”

He could hear the murmur of water not far away and figured the cave must be close to the stream where he’d first encountered Ellie. Leaving the horse, he followed his ears and found Ellie there, squatting on the bank in a pair of shorts and a tank top, washing some clothes in the stream. She had a dirty white bandage wound around her right forearm.

She looked up when she heard him approaching and shaded her eyes against the sun. “Morning, sunshine. You’re looking a little more awake today.” Despite her jocular tone, she wasn’t smiling, but eyed him warily.

The last thing Joel wanted to do was come across as a threat, so he stayed back out of reach and squatted down so he was at her eye level. “Morning. I, uh…I don’t really know how to thank you,” he said awkwardly, “but thank you. I think you saved my life.”

The tension in her shoulders relaxed visibly, and she gave him a little half-smile. “Probably.”

He pointed to the water. “You mind if I…”

“Please. I’d appreciate it. You smell like a fucking slaughterhouse.”

Joel laughed at that, the first free, unguarded laugh he’d experienced in he didn’t remember how long. He’d always appreciated women who spoke their minds, and Ellie was all barbs and no sugarcoating. Still, he thought he detected a hint of amusement in her eyes and it felt good to be sharing humor with someone else. Laughing felt good; it made him feel halfway human again. He stood and walked to the edge of the stream, where a bend in the creekbed had formed a deep pool, but when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glassy surface of the water he stopped cold and knelt on the bank to get a better look. “Jesus Christ.” His smile vanished, eaten up by shock.

His hair was long, down past his ears, and it stuck out at crazy angles above his red-rimmed eyes. His chin and beard were caked and matted with blood, which had dripped down and stained the chest of his shirt a deep red. He was skinnier than he ever remembered seeing himself, his cheeks hollow and his cheekbones jutting sharply out from his face. He looked crazy, no wonder she’d asked him that last night. No, worse. He looked…

He glanced over to where Ellie still knelt upstream from him, where the water was shallower. She was watching him closely.

“I’m really goddamned glad you didn’t shoot me last night. I look like a fucking infected.”

She smirked. “Yeah, well, that’s what I thought you were at first. But I’ve never heard an infected say anybody’s name before. Who’s Sarah?”

Joel looked away from her, unable to speak past the sudden lump in his throat, even if he’d been willing to do so. He sat back and started to take his boots off, the silence stretching on uncomfortably until he said, “Thanks for the food this morning."

He could feel her staring holes in him, but he didn’t look at her, he just unbuttoned his blood-crusted shirt and shrugged out of it, and then waded into the pool, still wearing his jeans and underwear. The water was surprisingly cold, must have been spring-fed, but it felt good on his aching hide. He sluiced water over his head and scrubbed at his matted beard, wishing he had a pair of scissors to trim it, too.

“Here,” Ellie said. Joel turned around to see her holding out a pink plastic bottle of shampoo.

He took it and looked down, touched by her kindness despite himself. It had been a long time since anyone had been kind to him. “Appreciate it.”

She shrugged. “I’ll give you some privacy. Believe me, you’re doing me a favor.” And with that, she trudged back up the trail to the cave, her wet laundry scrunched into a ball at her hip.

He watched her as she went, her long white legs strong and sure as she picked her way up the stony path, and he realized that a million years ago, some man he used to be might have thought she was pretty.

* * *

She’d left a bar of soap on the bank too, and Joel used it to scrub as much of the blood and dirt out of his shirt as he could, and then he stripped his jeans off and gave them the same treatment. He was still weak, even this little effort left him breathless. He washed his body twice, scrubbing himself until the lather was white instead of gray. God, it felt good to divest himself of the persistent layer of grime for once, to strip the grease and dirt out of his hair. The shampoo in the pink bottle smelled like strawberries, a scent Joel would have avoided before the outbreak, but when he opened the bottle...it wasn’t that the scent triggered any specific memory, but it reminded him so strongly of how things like this used to be normal, that before he could stop it, the carefully constructed dam holding back his memories had burst.

_Drinking coffee and eating breakfast tacos at Strange Brew before he went to work in the morning. That perfume Annabelle wore while they were dating, the one that drove him so crazy. Sarah’s smooth skin when she was still a baby. The roar of the crowd when Austin High School made a touchdown. The smell of Tommy’s apartment, a combination of week-old dishes, cigarette smoke, and stale beer._

The flood of memories came faster and faster, everything that he had lost and tried to forget. _Tommy. Sarah._

The shampoo bottle slipped from his fingers and drifted downstream as he convulsed in an honest-to-god sob. It had been years since Joel had cried, and he couldn’t stop it now that it had started. He sat down on the bank of the stream and buried his head in his knobby knees, gulping for air as his body heaved with sobs and tears ran down his face into his beard. He cried so hard that each sob wracked his wasted body and left him shuddering and gasping for breath. It didn’t feel cathartic, it felt ugly, and Joel hated himself for not being able to stop. It wasn’t until he heard the rattle of pebbles from the path behind him and thought Ellie was coming back that he was able to rein himself into some semblance of calm, and he was able to maintain it even when he turned around and saw no one coming down the path. Must have been some small animal that disturbed the stones, but Joel was grateful for the distraction.

Wading downstream, he rescued the shampoo bottle from where it had gotten caught against some rocks, and then he finished his bath, rubbing hard at his red eyes, as if that would dry them up.

* * *

When Joel painstakingly limped his way back up to the cave, he found Ellie slipping her arms through the straps of a backpack.

“I was starting to wonder if you’d drowned,” she said. “I was going to come check on you before I left.”

“You’re leaving? Where are you going?”

“Relax. I just need to do a little hunting, or we’re not going to eat tonight. I’ll be back before dark.”

“I can help,” he said.

Ellie eyed him skeptically. “No offense, but I don’t know you. That means I’m not gonna have you at my back with a weapon. Besides, you don’t look like you’re gonna keel over anymore but you’re barely in good enough shape to make it to the stream and back. You just stay here and rest that ankle up, so you can be on your way.”

Joel clenched his jaw and nodded. He couldn’t blame her, but he didn’t like feeling so useless. “You gonna leave me here without anything to defend myself?”

She gave him a hard stare, then said, “You seem like a resourceful guy. There are plenty of rocks around.”

“This is bullshit!” he said. “What if some infected wanders up here? You ain’t exactly got a door on this thing.”

She laughed. “No infected come up here. The infected stay where the people are.” She slipped a bow over her shoulder, gave him a considering look, and then pulled his sheathed Bowie knife out of her pocket and threw it to him. “Don’t make me regret that. I don’t have enough ammo to waste putting a bullet in your brain.”

“Thanks,” Joel said, a wry smile pulling the corners of his mouth. “Isn’t there anything I can do while you’re gone, to help out?”

She tossed him a bottle of water and said, “If you know how to make snares, I could use more. The wire is in that box.” She pointed to a small wooden chest.

Joel nodded. “I can do that. Be careful out there.”

She gave him a strange look, then shook her head. “Okay. Bye.”

After she left, Joel settled himself on his bedroll and twisted wire into loops for snares for a while. When the wire was all used up, another rummage through the box turned up a pair of scissors, which Joel used to trim his hair and beard to a finger's length, by feel.

And then he waited. Once, in the late afternoon, he thought he heard a set of gunshots, but the way sound echoed crazily through these ridges it could have come from the next ridge over or from miles away.

When night fell, he made a small fire, just so he wasn’t sitting in a dark cave by himself, but the flickering shadows tricked his eyes and made him start so many times it was almost worse than the dark. Almost.

Joel sat near the cave entrance, his back propped up against the rock wall, and his knife within easy reach of his hand. The silence was absolute. How the hell did she stand it here, all alone?

He thought he heard her coming back once after night had fully fallen, but the sound turned out to be just a couple of javelinas nosing through the brush near the cave entrance, and Joel spooked them off when he dragged himself to his feet. After that he stood on the wide, flat ledge outside the cave, leaning on the low wall of rock she’d built for the horse paddock and straining his ears and eyes for any sign of her. He tipped his head back to look at the sky. It was a moonless night, and the space between the stars was a deep, inky black. And the stars...you never saw stars like that before the outbreak. There were billions of them, all scattered across the sky in bright diamond clusters, the long arm of the Milky Way galaxy smeared across the lower quarter of the sky like a river of light.

A satellite winged its way across the sky, a relic of life before, no longer sending or receiving anything, just endlessly circling the planet until its orbit decayed and it crashed back down home in a blaze of glory. He wondered if the astronauts up on the space station had made it back to Earth, after everything started going to shit, or if they’d been stuck up there, captive witnesses to the death of humanity until their air and supplies ran out.

The thought of a space station full of corpses, just going around and around forever, was so oppressive that Joel stopped looking up and limped his way back into the cave to take up his vigil again.

Joel started to wonder what he would do if Ellie didn’t come back. He was well set for water, but another search of the cave this afternoon had turned up no food at all; either she didn’t have any food stored, or it was so well hidden that he was missing it somehow. His stomach growled at him. “Easy,” he said aloud. “We’ll figure something out.”

“You always talk to yourself, or is this a special occasion?”

Joel leapt to his feet, and winced in pain as the movement jarred his swollen ankle. “Jesus!” She had come up on him completely silently. When she came into the circle of the firelight, he swore again. “Jesus.” She was pale, more pale than she should be, and blood was dripping down her right arm and spattering on the rocky ground. “What happened?”

“Ran into one of those red-bandana-wearing motherfuckers. I’ve never seen them out this far from Odessa. He managed to wing me before I took him down.” She said it matter-of-factly, like she was talking about taking an evening stroll instead of facing a life-or-death situation. “I’ll need your help getting the medical supplies ready and putting the horse up.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Medical supplies? He’d been over every damn inch of this cave, and aside from the little wooden chest, which held not much more than the snare wire and a few tools, and a rickety little bookshelf stacked with trashy paperbacks, there wasn’t much else. There certainly wasn’t a goddamn thing he could use to treat a bullet wound.

She nodded. “Louise is down at the stream, watering herself. She’ll come up here when she’s done.” She took a deep breath, and Joel could tell by the way she clenched her jaw that she was in pain, even though she was trying like hell not to show it to him. “But let’s get me patched up first.”

“With what, exactly? You don’t even have anything to disinfect it!” Joel’s voice sounded angrier than he meant it to, but he couldn’t help himself. The woman’s irresponsibility would get her killed.

Ellie’s smile was hard. “You been going through my stuff, Joel?”

He looked away from her glare, but said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking. No one should be living like this, alone, with no supplies, on the knife’s edge between life and death every single fucking day.”

Ellie’s smile fell away. “Who the hell do you think you are? Let me tell you something: we all live on that knife’s edge. It’s just more honest out here.” She eyed him contemptuously. “You know what? Fuck you. I don’t need your help.” She swayed on her feet, giving lie to her words, but maintained her glare, as if daring Joel to call her on it.

He shook his head and said, “Fine.” And with that, he turned on his heel and left the cave to wait for the horse, whose name was apparently Louise.

He was back inside a few seconds later when he heard her slump to the floor, kneeling beside her. She hadn’t passed out, but the blood loss had made her woozy enough that she’d finally lost her balance.

“Come on, Ellie, I’m sorry. Let me help.” He reached out for her left shoulder, meaning to help her over to her bedroll, but she flinched away from him.

“No! Don’t touch me!” The panic in her voice made him freeze.

“Okay,” he said, in his most soothing tone. “I’m not...I just want to help you over to your bed…”

“No, you can’t...oh, fucking hell, I’m gonna pass out…” Her eyes were becoming more and more unfocused as the shock and blood loss finally started to catch up with her. She gripped Joel’s shirt with her good hand and said, with an urgency that surprised him, “Don’t touch my blood. You understand? Don’t touch it. Look behind the bookshelf. Don’t…” Her eyes rolled up into her head and she went limp.

 _God damn it._ Joel limped his way over to the bookshelf and shoved it aside to reveal a dark opening in the cave wall. As he crawled through it, he thought, _What the hell was that all about? Was she sick with something? She seems perfectly healthy, I mean, aside from the bullet wound, but she was so insistent…_

It was darker than the inside of a coffin on the other side of the hole, but Joel could tell by the way his movements echoed that this new chamber was big, much bigger than Ellie’s tiny living space. He groped in his pocket for the little LED keychain flashlight that he carried as a backup to the tactical light he normally wore clipped to his backpack.

When the light finally clicked on, he gave a low whistle. Canned food, sundries, medical supplies...everything was stacked and organized, enough to keep one person going for at least a year. How the fuck had she gotten all this up here by herself?

Joel picked up a medical kit and looked inside. Good. It had gauze, sutures, a surgical needle, everything he might need to sew her up. He hoped the bullet wasn’t still in her arm, but he grabbed a pair of needle-nosed pliers too, just in case, and a bottle of vodka for disinfectant. Remembering her strange insistence that he not touch her blood, he picked up a box of latex surgical gloves, and then crawled back through to the front cave with his haul.

Ellie was still unconscious, but she moaned softly when he straightened out her body and pulled her closer to the fire so he could see what he was doing a little better. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and gently tugged at the shirtsleeve on her wounded shoulder. He grimaced. Despite the current sluggish flow of blood from her wound, her shirt was stuck to it. It looked like she’d managed to stop the bleeding once already, but it had reopened. He was going to have to soak it off. Grimly, he unscrewed the cap on the vodka bottle and tipped it over her shoulder.

She woke up again when the alcohol hit her open wound. “Fuck! That…” Her eyes focused on him and filled with a fear that Joel didn’t even begin to understand how interpret. “What are you doing?” She looked down at her bloody shoulder, and his hands in the bloody gloves, poised above it. “I told you not to touch my blood!” Her voice climbed in volume and pitch as she looked around in panic. “Oh, god. Oh, my god. I’m...I TOLD you not to…”

“Ellie,” he interrupted. “It’s all right. You had gloves back there, remember? I’m wearing gloves. I haven’t touched your blood. It’s okay.”

Her frightened eyes went back to his hands and finally registered the gloves. She let out a shuddering sigh and relaxed. "Okay. Okay. Good. Shit, you scared me. Just...please be careful."

Joel got the impression she wasn't talking about her wound, but about himself. "What the hell is going on here?" he asked.

Ellie held his eyes for a long moment, and then nodded, her mouth still pinched with pain. “You should know, just in case I pass out again.” She struggled to sit up and started to pick at the dirty bandage wrapped around her right forearm, now saturated with blood from her shoulder wound. Her fingers were clumsy and Joel moved to help her, but she glared him down and said, “I can do it.”

She finally pushed the bandage down her arm, where it bunched around her wrist, and what Joel saw made him scramble back from her.

A bite. Where her forearm should have been smooth and unblemished was unmistakably a human bite. And just as unmistakable were the lumps of fungal growth under her skin.

“Fuck!” Joel looked down at the bloody gloves in horror, then stripped them as fast as he could and threw them into the fire. “Fuck, fuck, oh, fuck.” Her blood was _everywhere_. The tiny spatters on the cave floor, on the wall, on his _fucking clothes_ , all took on new and deadly meaning.

Everyone turned within two days, and he’d been with her almost that long. “How long? How long until you turn?”

She laughed, but there was no amusement in it. “Well, I don’t know, Joel. Considering I got bitten when I was seventeen, and that was five years ago, you tell me.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

“Look at it,” she said. “It’s not recent, you can tell.”

Joel’s pounding heart calmed down as he took a second look at the bite wound. She wasn’t lying, it was old, scarred over and white, not red. He looked at her again, his eyes wide. “What the fuck is going on here?”

She grimaced. “I’m immune. At least that’s what they told me.” She grabbed the hem of her shirt with her left hand and clumsily lifted it over her head, hissing in pain as the sticky fabric pulled away from her right shoulder. “But my blood can still infect someone who’s not immune. Which is basically everyone, or near enough that it doesn’t matter.” She balled the shirt up and tossed it into the fire.

“But...how?” Joel felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He’d never heard of anyone who was immune.

“Christ, you’re slow. My blood gets into your bloodstream...it’s lights out, and welcome to your new fungus overlord.” She picked up the bottle of vodka and grunted as she poured a good slug over the deep gash in her bicep. She gave the bottle a considering look, and then poured another slug down her own throat. “Or if you meant how am I immune, well, that’s easy. I’m a mutant superhero. Hand me that suture kit, will you?”

Joel did. He was still trying to process what she’d told him. “You mean, you’ve got a genetic mutation that makes you immune?”

She made a face. “It’s not as fun when you say it that way.” She tore open the suture kit with her teeth.

“Can you be serious for just a fucking second? I’m trying to understand…”

Ellie sighed. “Look, Joel, you seem like a decent enough guy, but there’s a reason I live up here all alone. I got sick of having to hide every time I scratched myself, and I got sick of worrying that I was going to infect someone. So just do both of us a favor and get out of here. Take care of Louise.”

“Maybe your blood isn’t infectious,” he said stubbornly.

“It is.” There was a quiet finality in her voice, a sadness that Joel didn’t want to know anything else about. It was clear she spoke from experience.

Deciding that there was no good way to respond, Joel didn’t say anything else. He limped outside and found Louise nosing at the makeshift paddock gate. “Hi, girl.” He moved the gate aside and Louise walked in, eagerly headed for the sparse patch of dry grass in the back corner. While she browsed, Joel untied the small javelina carcass tied on behind the saddle and set it next to the cave entrance, and then returned to unbuckle the saddlebags. One held a couple bottles of water and a bag of leathery jerky. The other...the other was his, he realized. In it was the battered map of west Texas, his toothbrush, a half-empty bottle of sunscreen, and down at the very bottom, the Harley-Davidson keychain that he’d given Tommy for his eighteenth birthday. He hadn’t even known Tommy still had it until he’d patted his brother’s pockets down for ammo, right before burying him.

Ellie had gone and found his horse, and brought back what she could salvage.

“Shit,” he said.

Moving as quickly as he could, Joel removed Louise’s saddle and rubbed her down. And then he headed back into the cave.

Ellie was halfway through stitching her shoulder. She’d done as much as she could comfortably reach, but the rest of the gash was placed so awkwardly that she’d have a hell of a time finishing it herself. She was resting, just staring into the fire, her eyes glassy from the pain and the vodka she’d drunk. She didn’t look up when he came back in.

Without saying anything, Joel shook two new gloves out of the box and put them on. When he knelt down at her right side, she finally seemed to notice him, and said, “What’re you doing?” Her words were slightly slurred.

“Finishing the job,” he said, taking the needle in his hand.

“No…” she said.

“Ellie,” he interrupted her. “You need help. Let me help you.” She looked like she was going to protest again, so he said, “I promise I’ll be careful.”

Her green eyes held his for a long moment, then she nodded. She turned her face back to the fire and took another long pull on the bottle of vodka.

Taking a deep breath, Joel held the edges of her wound together with one hand and pierced the needle through her skin with the other. She drew in her breath sharply, but other than that she didn’t move, and she remained impressively still while Joel finished stitching her up. The vodka bottle made more trips to her mouth, and her shaking hand was the only indication she gave of the pain he was causing her.

When he finally said, “Okay, all done,” and patted her gently on the shoulder, she slumped over in relief.

“Damn. That sucked.” She handed him the bottle. “You better slosh some of that on it, just to be safe. Remind me not to get shot again.”

Joel took the bottle and poured some onto the haphazard row of stitches in her bicep. “Don’t get shot again.”

She snorted, a tiny laugh that turned into a giggle.

It was the giggle that made Joel’s heart stop beating for a second. That she could laugh like that after what she’d just been through...Well. He’d never met anyone else like Ellie, that was for certain.

He handed the bottle back to her and wound a bandage around her upper arm. “Hey,” he said. “Why’d you have that bandage on over your bite, anyway?”

She made a sour face and took another sip of vodka. “Saves me having unfortunate misunderstandings with people.” She shook the stained bandage off her wrist and threw it toward the fire, but she missed by several feet. “Fuck.” She pulled from the bottle again.

“Hey, you might oughta go easy on that. You lost a lot of blood.” He soaked a washcloth with water, and then held out the rest of the bottle to her.

“Oh, might I oughta?” Her teeth gleamed in the firelight. He glared severely at her when she raised the bottle to her lips again, and she pouted and said. “You ruin all my fun.” But she handed the vodka over to him and took the water bottle he was offering her in exchange.

“Sorry,” he said. He ran the washcloth down the length of her arm, wiping the blood off her skin.

Although the day’s heat still lingered, and the water was warm, Ellie shivered. She turned and caught Joel’s wrist in both her hands and stared at his gloved hand unsteadily for a few seconds before her eyes traveled to his face. “You clean up all right,” she said. “I like the trim.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then she took the washcloth from him. “I think I can probably finish that,” she said. “Will you find me a new shirt? My clothes are in the back.”

 _I like what you’re wearing right now._ The thought flashed through his mind before he could stop it. He looked down at her lithe torso, clad only in a black sports bra, and swallowed hard. “Yeah. Of course. Be right back.”

Joel crawled back through the little opening in the back wall and rummaged through the pile of clothes until he found a tank top for her, something that wouldn’t irritate her stitches.

When she took the shirt from him with a grateful sigh and raised her arms over her head to pull it on, Joel saw something he hadn’t noticed before: her belly, instead of being taut, was soft and latticed with stretch marks. They were dark pink, too new yet to have faded to a less noticeable silver.

Ellie was a mother.

Or had been.

* * *

“Damn, this is good.” Ellie took another bite of the meat. “Are you sure you’ve never cooked javelina before?”

Joel swallowed the bite that he’d been chewing before answering, “Never even seen one before today, except on nature programs, but I reckon they’re a lot like pigs.”

“And you’ve cooked a lot of pigs, have you?” She smiled. With her half-drunk and mostly out of commission, Joel had taken over kitchen duty, skinning and roasting the little javelina she’d brought back from her hunting trip. She seemed to be sobering up, now that she had some food in her stomach.

“No,” he said with a grin. “But I’ve eaten a lot of pigs.”

“Mmm. Bacon.”

“Bacon. And ham. And pork chops. And carnitas.”

“What the hell is carnitas?” she asked.

“What the...where did you even grow up, woman?” Joel put on his best affronted look.

“Massachusetts,” she said. “Just outside of Boston. I didn’t end up here in Texas until after the outbreak.”

“A Yankee! I shoulda known. I’m sorry for you, I really am.” She rolled her eyes at him, so he said, “You make carnitas by braising a big hunk of pork until you can pull it apart and then you fry it just until the outsides turn crispy. We used to go to this taco place in east Austin that made corn tortillas from scratch and served carnitas so good it would bring tears to your eyes.”

“Who’s we?”

Joel, still lost in his rhapsodic memory of carnitas tacos, wasn’t prepared for her question. “What?”

“You said _we_ used to go to the taco place. I was just wondering who _we_ was.”

Joel’s smile died. “Ah…” Unconsciously, he rubbed the scratched face of the watch on his wrist. Normally, he wouldn’t talk about Sarah, but Ellie had lost a child too, from the looks of things. “My daughter. Her name was Sarah.”

Ellie had gone unnaturally still, like every muscle in her body was tensed.

“She was shot by the military, the night the outbreak hit Austin,” he continued, surprised by the calm in his voice.

“I’m sorry, Joel.” She hugged her knees to her chest, her face a blank mask.

“You wanna know what the weird thing is? I don’t believe in angels, or heaven, or even God much anymore. But that day you found me? I thought I heard Sarah’s voice. She led me right to you. It was almost like…I know this is gonna sound crazy...almost like she wanted me to find you.”

She didn’t answer him at first, but then she stood up, leaving the rest of her dinner on the plate beside her. “You’re right. It does sound crazy.” She turned away from him. “I’m going to sleep. Please take care of the fire.”

Joel sat there, staring into the fire and feeling like a total fool. It was stupid to have opened up like that. And it was doubly stupid for him to have expected her to show him some sympathy or open up in return.

Moving as quietly as he could, Joel cleaned up the plates and smothered the fire, then he lay down on his bedroll and stared up at the dark ceiling of the cave, rubbing his watch and thinking of Sarah.

He was still awake, an hour or two later, when he heard Ellie start to cry softly. It was only a small sound, but it was pitiful, the cry of an animal in pain. He held himself still and listened to her, knowing that anything he said or did at this point would only make it worse. He closed his eyes only after her crying had wound down and she seemed to have fallen into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

The next day, Joel’s ankle was almost as good as new, but Ellie didn’t make any mention of him leaving again. Nor did she the day after that. On the third day, she asked him to help her build a smoker, so she could preserve more meat, and Joel happily obliged. They went fishing the day after that, sitting in companionable silence while they caught a brace of trout, most of which went right into her new smoker. By the time Joel had been there a week, they’d fallen into an easy rhythm together, and Ellie stopped covering up her bite mark (it was a waste of bandages anyway). And by the time he’d been there a month, Joel rarely even thought about leaving. He didn’t know where he’d go even if he did; he had no one left to go to.

Autumn came, and the temperatures at night started getting cooler. Joel came back to the cave one day after hunting alone to find Ellie had decorated the little living area with juniper boughs and was waiting for him with a red plastic cup of good bourbon.

“What’s all this?” he asked with a smile.

“Today is my anniversary. Tonight, we celebrate.” She took a deep drink from her own cup, and Joel could tell she’d already had a few.

“Anniversary? Of what?” The bourbon was sweet and smooth, probably the best he’d ever had. Of course, considering that he’d been more of a Jack Daniels kind of guy before, he didn’t have much experience with good booze. Nevertheless, this tasted pretty good to him.

She grinned fiercely. “Of my freedom.” She drew him by the hand into the cave’s interior. “But first, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

“Y’know, you shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach. And you shouldn’t drink alone.”

“Which is why I’m really glad you’re back with dinner. What is it?”

Joel held up the leather saddlebag. “Ground squirrel stew.”

She made a face. “Ugh. Again?”

“Sorry. If I’d’a known it was a special occasion, I woulda bagged us a mountain lion or something. Go grab me an onion and some sage while I clean these suckers.”

She pouted. “I’ll pretend it’s mountain lion.” She headed down toward the stream, where she had a tiny garden patch with greens and onions.

It was a good thing their snares had done well the night before, because Joel hadn’t seen anything bigger than a lizard while he was out today. He’d seen signs of big groups of javelina, but hadn’t come across any. The winter was going to be pretty lean, if today was any indication. They might actually have to dip into their store of canned goods…

 _Huh,_ Joel thought, pausing in his preparation and sitting back on his heels. _When the hell did I start thinking of this place as ours instead of hers?_

Ellie came back with the onion and herbs, and watched him toss the stew together in a dutch oven over the little fire while she sipped on her bourbon. When the pot was covered and all they had left to do was wait, she said, “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me?”

Joel finished the bourbon in his cup and looked for the bottle for a refill. “Ask you what?” He was pretty sure he knew what she was talking about, but neither of them had said a word about their respective pasts since the night he told her about Sarah.

“The anniversary of my freedom.” Her eyes narrowed at him, like she was trying to figure out if he was really slow or just being dense on purpose to rile her up.

Joel found the bourbon bottle on top of the little wooden supply chest. He poured himself another generous shot. “I reckoned you’d tell me when you were good and ready.” He looked at the bottle. _Angel’s Envy bourbon. Now ain’t that a thing._

She glared at him. “Sometimes you are so goddamn irritating.”

Joel frowned in frustration. “What, now you _want_ me to pry?”

“No!” She almost yelled it at him. “I want you to be fucking curious! You’ve been here, what, almost two months? And we don’t know a goddamn thing about each other! And now, here I am, about to spill my guts, and you act like you don’t fucking care!”

Joel put his cup down and took hers away too, so he could take both of her hands in his. “Ellie. I know you hate ground squirrel stew. And I know you’re a hell of a good shot, and that bad jokes make you laugh. And I know you helped a dying man because you thought it was the right thing to do. I know you were lonely up here by yourself, because if you weren’t you woulda asked me to leave a long time ago, and I know you cry at night when you think I’m asleep. And I know I’ve never met anyone like you.” He looked away to give her time to blink back the tears brimming in her eyes. “I care, okay? But it also doesn’t matter, because whatever you say won’t change the fact that I know I like being here with you, right now.”

He looked back at her, but now tears were streaming down her face. Gently, she extricated her hands from his and said, in a voice so low he wasn’t even sure he heard her at first, “I think you should go.”

It felt like a fist had clenched around his heart. “What?”

“You should go. Tomorrow. You can’t stay here any more.” She drew in a shuddering breath.

“Ellie, can’t we talk about…” He reached out for her, but she slipped away from his fingers, nimble as a deer.

“No,” she gasped. “You need to go. I don’t want you here. I can’t…” A sob was ripped from her throat. Too late, Joel realized that she was making her way to the cave entrance. “I’m sorry. Tomorrow. You have to go.” She turned and ran out into the night, crying like her heart was broken.

“Ellie!” Joel ran after her, but it was black as pitch out already, and he could barely see his hand in front of his face. “Ellie! Come back! Please, can we talk about this?”

He called for her until his voice was hoarse, but she didn’t answer, and she didn’t come back.

* * *

The next morning when Joel woke up from the little fitful sleep he’d managed to get, he found a pile of supplies neatly stacked next to the cave entrance. On top of it was a note that read,

> _Joel,_
> 
> _There’s a group of good people in Big Bend National Park, up in the Chisos basin. They’ve got plenty of food and water to share, and they could use a man like you if you decide to stay there. I marked the trail on your map. Just head south and avoid Fort Davis. These supplies should get you to Alpine, and then some, but don’t get lost again, just to be on the safe side. You should be able to resupply there. I’m sorry I can’t let you take Louise. _Once you get to the park, you can’t miss the signs to the basin.__

The next paragraph was scratched out so vehemently that the pen had made holes in the paper. The note ended simply,

> _Good luck._
> 
> _Ellie_

Joel stared at the note until it felt like the words were burned into his mind. Then he nodded, folded the note and slipped it into his pocket, and packed all the supplies into the backpack she’d considerately left for him.

He looked around the cave before he walked out into the autumn sunshine and said, “Bye, Ellie.” And then he was on his way.

 


	2. And Am I Born to Die?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Joel makes his way south to Big Bend, he discovers that traveling alone can be dangerous, for more than one reason.

_It's fare thee well my own true lover_   
_I never expect to see you again_   
_For I'm bound to ride that Northern railroad_   
_Perhaps I'll die upon this train_

\- From _A Man of Constant Sorrow_ , traditional American folk song

* * *

Joel walked steadily through the day, occasionally stopping to check the compass that Ellie had given him to make sure he was still heading mostly southeast. After considering the map, he’d decided to cut over to highway 17; he wasn’t crazy about how exposed he’d be on the flat, open road, but it seemed like the best way to avoid getting lost again. His feet were hitting the cracked pavement by midmorning on the second day.

Joel was a strong hiker, but as the flat, featureless desert plains rolled slowly by him he found himself retreating more and more into his mind, and letting his body continue on automatic pilot. It was the walker’s equivalent of highway hypnosis. He would pass an abandoned car on the road and wonder who had been driving it, where they had ended up after they’d run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, where they had been headed, and then the next thing he knew, the sun would have moved in the sky and when he looked behind him the car would be nowhere to be seen. It alarmed him, because he knew he needed to stay alert for signs of infected or human ambushes, but it kept happening.

Mostly, he thought of Ellie.

What had she wanted to tell him? And what had he said to make her so upset? Joel went over every word that he remembered, but nothing jumped out as being overly confessional, nothing that should have prompted her extreme reaction. He’d been trying to tell her he liked her, damn it, that he understood her. He smiled wryly at that. Obviously he’d been wrong on that last count. He didn’t understand a thing about Ellie. Why couldn’t she have just talked to him? Why had she run away like that? Joel was deeply distressed by the thought that his last words to her had made her cry.

He felt her absence like a sore tooth; an ache that wouldn’t go away. They’d been so _good_ together. It was different than with Tommy. Tommy was his brother, and Joel always loved him, but the two of them had fought like cats and dogs, constantly. They’d stayed together because in the end they were family, but sometimes they hadn’t liked each other very much, and they’d definitely had different ideas about how to survive in this world. But Ellie...in the months Joel and Ellie lived together, they’d fallen so easily into a smooth companionship, like the physical equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences, that Joel hadn’t even realized how much he’d been craving it until now, now that it was gone. Hell, he’d even forgotten she was infected most of the time.

And yet, in all that time, they hadn’t spoken much. Oh, they’d talked about whatever task was to hand, cooking supper, or hunting, or improving the paddock wall, but not about themselves, and not about their pasts. Joel realized that Ellie was almost as much of an enigma to him now as the day she found him, dying of thirst near her stream.

And maybe that’s where he’d gone wrong. She’d been about to reveal something to him about her past, something important, and he’d stupidly upset the fragile balance between them. He’d wanted to show her how much he knew about her, but instead he’d just revealed how much he was beginning to care about her. And that, he knew deep down, was what had sent her running away.

Because she didn’t feel the same way about him.

They’d had a good thing going, until he’d opened his big fucking mouth and ruined it.

And now...she’d rather be alone up there in the middle of nowhere than have him anywhere near her.

Joel stopped and ran his hand over his tired face. He’d lost another couple of hours, walking while he was lost in thought, and now the sun was setting. His stomach growled at him.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get off the road, and I’ll feed you something.”

A gray fox watched him curiously while he unfolded his bedroll behind a convenient clump of bushes and when he settled down onto it, the fox melted away into the twilight.

Joel spread the contents of his backpack onto the blanket in front of him. He was only eating one meal a day, at night, trying to conserve his supplies as much as possible. Ellie had stocked him up with cans of beans and tunafish and sardines, as well as a handful of protein bars. He could eat one can a day and one protein bar, and still make it to Alpine with some to spare, if he managed to cover at least twenty-five miles every day. If he wanted to take the time, he had his bow, and there were plenty of jackrabbits and prairie dogs around. Water was more problematic because it was heavy to carry, but there weren’t many water sources between Ellie’s place and Alpine. He had started with three two-liter bottles, and assuming he could make it to Alpine in four days, he could drink a little more than half of each bottle every day. A liter wasn’t much, especially since he was exerting himself and losing moisture sweating all day, but it was something, it was enough to keep him alive. And if he ran into any water sources on the way, he could always refill.

Joel peeled back the top on a tin of sardines and ate them with his fingers, chewing mechanically and without enjoyment. Food was simply fuel to keep his muscles moving one more day. He ate the last fish and then tipped the oil left in the tin into his mouth and swallowed, and then licked the residue out of the tin knowing that he couldn’t afford to waste a single calorie. When he was done, he threw the tin out into the desert as far away from his campsite as he could. He didn’t need any curious animals disturbing him because of the smell.

And then he settled back on his blanket, hands behind his head, and watched the sky fade from blue to gray to black, studded with bright diamonds. He didn’t want to think about Ellie any more, so he listened to the night around him, full of the sound of insects and small scurrying animals, but nothing more. Joel felt like he might have been the last man on Earth. He felt the empty space around him pressing in on him from all sides, heavy as a ton of rocks on his chest. A fire would have helped, it would have kept the darkness and emptiness at bay, at least until he could fall asleep, but he knew he couldn’t light a fire, it was too flat here, and he was too exposed. In the flat, unrelenting darkness, fire could be seen from miles away.

Before he even realized what he was doing, he was humming, deep in his throat, and then singing softly to himself, one of the old hymns his granny Miller had taught him.

 _And am I born to die, to lay this body down,_   
_And must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown?_

 _A land of deepest shade unpierced by human thought,_   
_The dreary regions of the dead where all things are forgot._

It kept the emptiness at bay, somewhat, to imagine his granny’s voice as he sang to himself. He could almost feel the papery skin of her strong hands on his chest, thumping the rhythm against his heart the way she always did when she taught him a song. Granny Miller had grown up in east Texas singing the Sacred Harp, and it was she who had encouraged Joel’s love for music, teaching him how to read the shape notes in the book and dragging him along to Sacred Harp singings with her. When he was ten, she’d bought him his first guitar and taught him his first chords. She’d died a few years later, and Joel hadn’t thought about her for years, but he missed her now so much it felt like a punch in the gut.

 _Soon as from earth I go, what will become of me?_   
_Eternal happiness or woe must then my portion be._

 _Waked by the trumpet sound I from my grave shall rise,_   
_And see the Judge with glory crowned, and see the flaming skies._

A meteor streaked across the sky as the last line was still dying in his throat, and Joel shivered.

He had long ago given up on the idea that there was a heaven, or that Sarah was waiting for him somewhere, but sometimes he admitted to himself that this whole fucking shitstorm of what had become of the world sure felt a lot like judgement, and that he had been found wanting somehow. That the the only reason he was still alive wasn’t luck, but punishment.

Joel’s hand went to the scratched glass face of the watch on his left wrist, the one thing he had left that Sarah had touched. He shook off the morbid thoughts. No. He was alive because Sarah would have wanted him to keep fighting, and that’s what he’d continue to do, until the breath left his body.

He pulled his blanket around him, and as he finally drifted off, still touching the watch face, his last thoughts weren’t of Sarah, but of Ellie’s small white hands, folding the blanket before she set it in the pile for him by the cave entrance. He rubbed the blanket against his bearded cheek and fell into the light, half-wakeful doze he had adopted while traveling alone, his body resting but still ready to come to the alert at the first sign of danger.

* * *

Joel made Alpine in three days; thanks to the cooler September weather and the flat terrain, he’d been able to walk pretty much nonstop from dawn until dusk, eating up the miles with ease. Aside from the ominous plumes of smoke from the direction of Fort Davis, which he would have avoided even without Ellie’s advice, he saw no other sign of human life. Alpine itself was a ghost town, no people, no infected, just street after street of empty buildings. Joel had seen plenty of ghost towns, but usually there were a few infected still hanging around. This place looked like it had been cleaned out a long time ago, and not by FEDRA, either. He saw no evacuation signs, no sign that the government or the military had ever even come through here.

“Alpine, population 5,972,” he murmured to himself, quoting the sign he’d seen on highway 118 on his way into town. Six thousand people, just gone, like they’d evaporated into the dry desert air. “Well, let’s see if they left anything behind.”

It turned out that the former residents of Alpine had left almost everything behind. _What the hell happened here?_ he wondered, as he rifled through a kitchen cabinet in the third house he’d come to. None of the houses or businesses he’d seen were boarded up against looting, the cabinets in this house were still full of canned goods and sundries...it looked like everyone in the town had just gone on vacation and never come back. He filled his backpack with granola bars and two unopened jars of peanut butter, a rare find these days. And then, in the back of the cupboard, he saw...was that...? His heart almost stopped when his fingers closed on the small jar of Nutella.

“Oh, man,” he whispered. “Let it still be good…”

The jar was about half-full, and it was slightly rancid, but to Joel it tasted like heaven. He dug a spoon out of a drawer and attacked the jar, intending to eat the whole thing, right there. Chocolate. He’d never been able to say no to chocolate, and the fact that he hadn’t tasted any in probably over two years made him savor every bite. While he ate, his thoughts inevitably turned to Sarah, who had inherited his insatiable appetite for sweets, and the day at the supermarket she’d tried to convince him that Nutella would be a nutritious addition to their breakfast choices.

_“Look, Dad, it’s got nuts in it. Nuts are good for you! It’s right there in the name, Nut-ella.”_

_He’d grabbed the jar from her and turned it around to read the ingredients. “Yep. It’s got nuts all right, but it’s basically all fat and sugar. You know this stuff is just expensive cake frosting, right?”_

_She’d looked utterly forlorn. “But, Dad, nuts…”_

_And he’d caved, just like she’d known he would. He’d wanted to buy it just as much as she did, but at least he’d given a stab at being the responsible adult, even if it had been more halfhearted than usual. “All right, fine. But not for breakfast. And not every day. This is a once-in-a-while treat, you understand?”_

_The smile on her face had been worth a million bucks, and saying yes to the Nutella had made it much easier to say no to the Cocoa Crispies when they got to the cereal aisle._

Joel stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth, his stomach rolling queasily. Suddenly, he didn’t want another bite; he didn’t want to ever see the stuff again. He threw the spoon across the room with a muffled curse and took a swig of water to wash the cloying sweetness out of his mouth. He gripped the counter hard with both hands. He wanted to break something, or shout until he lost his voice, or put his fist through a wall.

He wasn’t good at traveling alone, he realized. When he was around other people, he just naturally kept his emotional walls in place so nobody could get too close to him, but the irony was, he needed people around him to keep those walls up. Out here, alone, it was like he was lost in his own head, and his walls were slipping, letting his memories sneak up and ambush him out of nowhere.

It was starting to make him feel like he was going crazy. And he needed to get a handle on it, or he was going to end up dead.

Joel held on to his anger; it was the only thing that helped him push the memories of Sarah back down deep, where they couldn’t hurt him. And then he gathered his supplies and left, leaving the door hanging open and the container of Nutella on the counter, still open and unfinished.

* * *

His food supplies replenished, Joel concentrated his search efforts on finding more water. He’d had luck before with offices—a lot of the time they had stocks of those big water jugs for water coolers—so he left the residential streets and headed for the heart of town, looking for likely businesses to search.

As he got closer to the center of town, he started seeing doors marked with Xs, drawn in red paint. There was no explanation for the markings, but Joel figured a red X was a pretty clear warning, so he avoided those doors, which seemed to be concentrated in the very center of town. A back alley between two main streets had four unmarked doors that looked like they opened up into downtown businesses, and no red Xs. The first door was a candy shop, but the second had a sign that read _Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, Tammy Fielding_. Shops that once sold edibles had all mostly been picked over in the first few months, so he’d had better luck over the years with offices. Some had kitchens stocked with packaged snacks or vending machines, refrigerators full of sodas, and those ubiquitous water coolers. Joel tried the door to the insurance office, but it was locked.

 _Okay. Let’s see if I can remember how to do this._ Joel unslung his backpack and rummaged through it for one of his homemade shivs, looking for one with the thinnest blade, one that he could fit between the door and the jamb. Back in Philly, with their hunter crew, he and Tommy had both gotten lessons on breaking and entering from Fat Mike, a little round guy who’d done a stint in Sing Sing and claimed he’d never met a locked door he couldn’t open.  

Tommy had taken to it immediately, but it was a skill that required too much finesse and patience to come easy to Joel, so he’d just let Tommy do the breaking part while he took point on the entering. Between them, they’d made a pretty good team.

“Miller brothers, kings of the criminal underworld,” he said under his breath, his fingers closing around the handle of a knife that had once been used to fillet and descale fish. The blade was thin, flexible, and slightly curved, and would probably suit his purposes just fine. He stood up again, pushing down the pang he felt at Tommy’s loss. No more Miller brothers. He’d have to think about that later, when he had time to unpack it.

He slipped the blade between the door and the jamb, just above the lock, and angled it down. Then, keeping pressure on the bolt of the lock with the knife, he slowly turned the door handle until he felt the knife slide into place, between the bolt and the frame. Keeping the pressure constant, he pulled the knife back toward himself, using it to push the bolt out of the frame. As the door finally slipped open, Joel cursed as the thin blade snapped off, but it had done its job.

The door swung open to reveal a carpeted hallway leading to a couple of offices and beyond that, a reception area. Joel could see an open doorway off the reception area that looked like it might be a kitchen. He cautiously padded into the interior, his steps stirring puffs of fine dust from the carpet. Jesus, it smelled weird in here, but he couldn’t see any spores, so he attributed it to the place being locked up for the past six years.

That was, until he found the body stretched out behind the reception desk.

It was desiccated by the dry desert air, but Joel could tell from her clothes that it had been a woman, one with long blonde hair. Her hands were clutched to her throat, and her mummified lips, which were pulled back in a grimace from her teeth, were a deep cobalt blue. Over the past six years, he’d seen a fair number of corpses, but he’d never seen anything like this. He was leaning over her to get a better look, hands planted on the metal reception desk for support, and that’s when he noticed that the dust that coated everything in the office was also blue. He straightened up and looked at his hands, now smeared with cobalt powder, then wiped them uneasily on his jeans. The similarity between the color of the dust and the color of the corpse’s lips couldn’t be a coincidence. Joel backed slowly out of the room, toward the front door, but every step disturbed a puff of blue dust, sending it swirling into the air. Fuck. He held his breath, thinking to himself that he really needed to find a new gas mask.

His heel caught on a piece of ripped carpet, and before he could stop himself he was on his back on the floor, a cloud of blue dust swirling around him and settling on his skin. Worse, his fall had made him gasp involuntarily, and the tickling, burning sensation in his lungs when he inhaled the dust made him start to cough uncontrollably. His eyes streaming, he scrambled to his feet. He needed to get the fuck out of here, and he needed to get this stuff off his skin as soon as possible.

The little kitchen area near the front door held two five-gallon jugs of water, and Joel grabbed them both. When he finally made it outside, wrenching the front door’s deadbolt open and staggering through the doorway, he saw that the exterior of the door was marked with a red X, as were most of the other doors on the street.

“Swell,” he growled. He stripped the top off one of the bottles and upended it over his head, rinsing himself off as thoroughly as he could, watching until the water pooling around his feet lost its blue tint. He rinsed out his mouth and blew his nose as hard as he could into the street, and then rinsed out his eyes for good measure. He wished there was some good way to get rid of what he’d inhaled; he was still coughing through his burning throat. He didn’t know what the strange blue dust was, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Waste of good water.”

He heard Ellie’s voice as clear as day, and he spun around in the street to find her, but it was empty and he was totally alone.

“That’s only gonna make it act faster. The moisture helps it soak into your skin.”

“What?” he said. His lips were tingling, and when he looked down at his fingers, the tips were stained blue. He spun around in the street again, but he was still alone.

“Oh, this is not good. This is not fucking good,” he mumbled to himself. He was hearing voices, and he was starting to feel dizzy. He looked down and saw that the second water bottle, still full, was shining like a miniature sun, and a small corner of his mind realized he was starting to hallucinate.

“Come this way, sugar,” a new voice said. It was his granny Miller’s voice, firm and robust, like it was before the emphysema had made her fight for every breath. “Bring that water with you.”

Joel obeyed, picking up the shining bottle and staggering toward the voice. The street was lurching under his feet, rolling like there was an earthquake. “You’ll be fine, little Jo. You’re gonna make it,” she said.

Joel’s eyes watered to hear his granny’s nickname for him. “What’s happening?” His voice grated in his throat.

“You’ll be okay, Dad. But you need to rest now.”

Sarah’s voice. Joel tried to turn his head, but when he tried to move his neck the world lurched so alarmingly that he was afraid he’d fall down, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up again if he did. “Sarah…”

He realized that he was heading back to the house where he’d found the Nutella, and the realization gave him a burst of energy. No blue dust in that house.

“Stay with me, Joel.” Ellie’s voice again. “It’s not far now.” Shadows started flickering at the edges of his vision, until they coalesced into the figure of a woman walking in front of him. “Stay with me.”

“I wanted to,” he said. His voice came out slurred and fuzzy, and his lips and tongue were completely numb. “You sent me away.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she slid away. “You’re not really here.”

“Stay with me,” she said again.

“I tried,” he insisted.

“Try harder.”

He was inside, and there was a bed in front of him. He stripped off his wet clothes and collapsed onto the bed, and let himself spiral away into darkness.

* * *

When Joel woke up his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth and he felt like had the grandmother of all hangovers. His head was splitting and his lungs hurt. When he sat up, a simple breath set off a hacking coughing fit, filling his mouth with mucus, and when he spit it out onto the wood floor next to the bed, it was bright blue.

“Fucking great,” he muttered. Whatever he’d been exposed to, he could only hope it wouldn’t have any lasting side effects. “You maybe coulda mentioned fucking hallucinogenic blue powder in your fucking note, Ellie,” he said to the empty room.

He was relieved when there was no answer.

He got dressed and dug in his pocket for the folded note. He’d gotten into the habit of taking it out and reading it every morning, just to remind himself that this journey had some point. Just like every morning, he tried to make out the paragraph she’d scratched out, but she’d been too thorough for him to pick out even one word. None of them looked like “watch out for toxic blue dust,” though. He coughed again, his lungs tearing and burning. Christ, his stomach muscles were sore. It felt like he’d been coughing for days, not…

Come to think of it, he had no idea how long he’d been out. It had been mid-afternoon when he’d gone into that office building, and by the light it was either getting on toward nightfall or early morning. Joel pushed himself to his feet, and then immediately sat down again. Jesus, he was dizzy with hunger.

His backpack was next to the bed, so he wolfed down a granola bar, which did absolutely nothing for his stomach. He ate another one, and then followed that with the last of Ellie’s PowerBars. As he ate and sipped flat water, the room grew dimmer and dimmer. Nighttime, then, but if he’d only been out for a couple of hours that wouldn’t explain why he was so fucking hungry. Joel staggered into the kitchen to find a spoon for one of the jars of peanut butter. The open jar of Nutella was still there, but the contents were crusted and dry.

“Shit.” Judging from the state of the Nutella, he’d been out of it for at least a day, maybe two. “I’m goddamn lucky there ain’t any infected in this town. Or people.”

He reluctantly decided to stay and rest in the house another day until he felt strong enough to move on, taking the time to clean out the pantry completely and refill his water bottles from the big five-gallon jug he’d taken from the office.

It was just on the outskirts of Alpine, on the south side of town, that he finally found the town’s residents. There was a small city of FEDRA tents here, set up in a ring. It looked like a triage center, except there were no line barriers or signs, no fences to separate the infected from the non-infected. In the center of the ring of tents were the people of Alpine, or what remained of them. There had been a massive fire, leaving behind a charnel house of blackened bones, thousands of them. Around the edges of the ring were a few unburned bodies that had been mummified by the desert air, infected and non-infected alike, and all of them had blue lips, just like the corpse Joel had found in the office.

Whatever had happened here, it had been bad.

His stomach heaving, he went through the tents as quickly as he could, turning up a gas mask that was still good. “Coulda used this a couple days ago,” he murmured to himself. His voice echoed weirdly in the eerie silence. He didn’t speak again.

Joel hit the road and put Alpine behind him, and he didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to leave a place.

* * *

It took him another seven days to reach the entrance to Big Bend National Park. His lungs still hurt from the blue dust, and he learned during the first day that if he pushed himself too hard he risked bringing on a coughing spasm that left him gasping for breath and spitting out bloody blue mucus. So he took it slow, and hunted to stretch his food stores. Fortunately, highway 118 ran through what used to be part of the west Texas cattle country, and there were still stock tanks collecting water not far from the road, even if the herds that used to water there were nowhere to be seen. He used up two precious water purification tablets to refill his bottles from one of the larger stock tanks on the afternoon of the third day, and two more when he stopped on the sixth day, near the exit to Terlingua.

He could see a gas station a mile down the road to Terlingua, so he headed that way, thinking he could maybe pick up a few more cans of food or bottled water. As he walked, his thoughts strayed to Ellie again. He wondered how cold it was getting up in the mountains at night, and he hoped she hadn’t given him her warmest blanket, because she’d need it more up there.

Joel approached the gas station cautiously, but there was no sign of life, or of any recent activity. His revolver ready in his right hand, he reached for the door handle.

 _I wonder if Ellie ever learned to drive,_ he thought. _She woulda been about the right age to get her license before the outbreak. I can just imagine her behind the wheel of a little Rabbit convertible. Or maybe one of those vintage Karmann Ghias. She don’t strike me as a pickup truck kinda girl..._ His hand was already on the door handle of the gas station before he heard the distinctive clicking snore.

He froze.

The windows were intact, but so dirty he couldn’t see through them, so he carefully wiped a hole in the grime on the door with a corner of his shirt.

Clickers had started showing up a few years back; infected who’d lived long enough for the fungus to grow out of their eye sockets and split their skulls. They couldn’t see, but they could hear you move, and once they heard you, you were pretty much done for. They were fast, and strong, and they were hard as fuck to kill. Joel had seen one take a shotgun blast to the chest and just keep on coming, overwhelming and ripping into the shooter like he was made of paper before he could get another round chambered in the gun. He’d had a few close calls with the things, himself, and now the sound of one inside the gas station made his blood run cold.

He put his eye to the clean spot in the glass. It wasn’t just one clicker, it was a whole nest. Six of them, all sleeping, and he’d almost walked right into the middle of them. Adrenaline surged through his body, and his heart pounded in his ears. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to run, but even though his lungs had been getting steadily better he couldn’t risk another coughing fit, not with six clickers in near proximity. So he backed slowly away from the door and walked away with calm, unhurried steps, trying not to imagine the sharp teeth coming down on his neck. When he made it back to highway 118, he felt his legs go out from under him, and he sat down abruptly on the pavement, shaking as the adrenaline drained out of his system.

 _That was too fucking close. What the hell is wrong with me?_ _I need to get my head back together, and get back in the habit of paying attention to every fucking noise around me, if I want to survive long enough to see Ellie again._ He shook his head. _No. What the hell. Where did that come from? I survive because that’s just what you do._ He clenched his jaw angrily. Thinking about Ellie had distracted him, and that had almost gotten him killed. Joel held on to his anger. _Fuck Ellie,_ he thought. _She didn’t want me up there with her, and she doesn’t give a shit if I get killed. I’ll probably never see her again, anyway._

He told himself that the crushing pain in his chest was just another side effect of inhaling the blue dust as he picked himself up and followed the sign that read _Big Basin National Park, Chisos Basin Campground_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay folks, this chapter was tough to tease into shape, and became three chapters in the process. I had a lot of crazy ideas for this AU, and it took me a while to pin everything down in a way that worked. Ellie's missing from this chapter, except in spirit, but she'll rejoin the story shortly, I promise.


	3. Blest Be the Tie That Binds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel finally reaches the Chisos Basin and meets the group of people who are making it their home.

_You can bury me in some deep valley_   
_For many years where I may lay_   
_Then you may learn to love another_   
_While I am sleeping in my grave_

\- From _A Man of Constant Sorrow_ , traditional American folk song

* * *

“That’s far enough. Stop right there.”

Even though Joel was expecting it, the voice took him by surprise. The lookout was camouflaged, so well-hidden that even though Joel had been looking for signs of people, he’d still missed the blind until he was almost right on top of it.

Joel held up his hands and waited until two figures melted out of the trees and stood on the road facing him, a woman and a man, both armed with hunting rifles. Joel didn’t make any sudden moves.  

“Y’all part of the group set up in the Chisos basin?” He kept his hands above his head.

The two exchanged a look, and the woman said, “Who wants to know?”

“Name’s Joel. Ellie sent me here.” With a nasty lurch, Joel realized that not only did he not know Ellie’s last name, he also had no idea what her history with these people might be, or even if she knew them personally. For all he knew, she’d only heard of this group in passing. And if they were so fucking friendly, why was Ellie living a hundred and fifty miles away?

He needn’t have worried. At Ellie’s name, the woman’s rifle dipped down and a grin broke across her face. “You’ve seen Ellie?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you’ll let me get somethin’ out of my pocket?” This last appeal was to her companion, a burly man who was still holding his rifle on Joel a tad more aggressively than the situation warranted.

The big man nodded once, and growled, “No sudden moves.”

Joel nodded and moved his right hand slowly to his pocket to dig out Ellie’s folded note, which he held out toward the woman.

She started toward him, but the man held her back. “You know the rules, Olivia. Five-foot distance until after quarantine.” To Joel, he said, “Put it on the ground and back away…”

“...five feet,” Joel finished. “Yeah, I got it.” He did as the man asked. When he was a safe distance from the paper, the man let his companion start forward.

“For fuck’s sake, Casey,” she muttered. “You know as well as I do that CBI isn’t communicable by touch.”

The big man shrugged. “I didn’t make the rules, Liv. I just make sure everyone follows them.”

She scooped the note up off the ground and read it, and said, “It’s from Ellie. Says we could use him, Casey.” She looked at Joel. “What kind of skills do you have, Joel? Why did Ellie send you to us?”

“I’m a decent hunter. I’m good with my hands. And I can hold my own against infected. As for why she sent me here…” Joel spread his hands in front of him. “...I lived with her for a couple months and she never mentioned this place until she gave me that note. So I got no notion.”

Casey finally lowered his rifle. “You lived with Ellie for a couple _months_? Seriously? Alone? Did she suddenly develop a personality that wasn’t unbearably bitchy?”

“Casey…” Liv rolled her eyes, and then said to Joel, “They didn’t get along.”

“Understatement of the fucking century,” Casey grumbled.

Joel said, “We got on all right.” _Better than all right,_ he thought.

“Yeah? So why’d she send you packing?”

Joel looked Casey in the eyes, keeping his face blank and his voice even. “I guess she just got tired of me.”

Casey guffawed and rested his rifle over his shoulder. “Yeah, sounds like Ellie, all right.”

Olivia looked worried. “Joel, did Ellie tell you she’s...about her...condition?”

“That she’s infected, but miraculously immune to CBI? Yeah,” Joel said. “We had that discussion.”

She smiled, relief on her face. “Okay, then. And you’re fine. Of course you’re fine, you had to have walked here, you’d have turned by now if she’d infected you. I _told_ her she could live around other people, as long as she was careful…” She shook her head. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. Hi. I’m Olivia Brenham, and the big guy is Bill Casey. Welcome to the Chisos Basin.”

* * *

"I'm sorry about the quarantine thing," Olivia said. They had left Casey down at the lookout blind and gone on up the road together, Joel walking five feet in front of her. "It applies to everyone who leaves the basin, too."

"You have problems with people gettin' bit and not tellin' anyone?" he asked.

"Only once." The tone of her voice made him stop and turn around to look at her, but her face was distant and closed.

Joel started walking again. “Once is usually enough.”

She didn’t answer him.

The road crested the ridge and Joel whistled as the whole basin spread out before him. “I can see why you chose this place.” The little green valley was like an inverted cup pushed into the top of the mountain, protected on all sides by forbidding rock faces, except for where the mountain ridge dipped down into a notched V on the far side of the valley. A few low buildings clustered together near where the road ran into the basin and Joel could see green rows of regular plantings in raised beds and in couple of flat patches of cleared ground.

“There it is,” Olivia said. “Home sweet home. We use the visitor center as our canteen and meeting space, and there are seventy-two rooms between the hotel, the motel, and the cottages. We’ve only got thirty-five people right now, so once you’re out of quarantine you should be able to take your pick of housing.”

“That’s it? You’re just gonna bring me in? No talking to the community first?” Even when he’d been a hunter, they hadn’t just welcomed every random stranger who wanted to join their group. More people always meant more mouths to feed, and that sometimes meant the people already in the group had to make do with less.

“Oh, there’ll be a meeting. And Esteban—he’s our leader, at least nominally—will want to talk to you. But if Ellie sent you here, you’ve got my vote. How...how is she?”

Joel studied his companion. She was older than him, maybe in her mid-forties, with coffee-colored skin and curly brown hair that was just starting to go gray. Her eyes were filled with an urgent concern that made Joel tell the truth. “She’s lonely. I think that’s why she let me stay with her so long.”

Olivia turned away, but not before he saw her eyes fill with tears. “I should get you to one of the quarantine rooms. It’s only three days, and we’ll feed you. You’ll have to leave your weapons and your pack outside.” Her voice was carefully controlled.

“Sounds fair.” Joel said, and started walking again.

They were almost to the first cluster of buildings, and approaching a knot of other people when Joel heard the high-pitched scream. He was reaching for his pistol when he realized that none of the others were reacting at all, but he was still surprised when two small girls came barreling around the corner of the building, shrieking with laughter, and almost ran right into him.

The littler one, all curly blonde hair and flailing brown limbs, shouted, “Mama!” and ran full-tilt into Olivia’s legs, throwing her arms around the woman’s waist.

“Hey there, peanut!” Olivia hugged her. “Now’s not a great time. I’m taking this guy,” she gestured to Joel, “to quarantine. His name is Joel, and he knows your auntie Ellie. Joel, this is Lucy, my daughter.”

The little girl looked at him with wide green eyes and shyly hid herself behind Olivia’s legs. Joel’s heart was pounding in his chest as he fought back rising panic. Kids. Ellie hadn’t said there would be kids here. How could he keep his memories of Sarah safely contained, if he had to see little kids every day?

As the silence stretched on, Olivia looked sharply at him, then said, “Okay, Luce, go play. I’ll see you when I get home.” After the girls had gone, she said, “You okay?”

 _When Sarah was that age I was still trying to get her to stop sucking her thumb._ “Fine,” he said remotely, still fighting to control the rush of memories of Sarah’s childhood that were threatening to break free.

She looked at him for a long moment, and finally nodded. “Whatever. Here, that first room is free.” She pointed up the steps of a two-story building that looked like a motel. “Leave your stuff by the door, I promise I’ll keep it safe for you. The doctor will be down to examine you in a little bit. And Esteban will probably come by tonight. There are some books in there if you get too bored.”

As Joel let himself into the motel room and listened as Olivia locked the door behind him, he hoped he hadn’t made a huge mistake coming here. He stretched out on the sagging mattress of the rickety bed and stared at the ceiling, his arms behind his head. Nothing to do now but wait.

* * *

A few hours later, there was a knock, and Olivia’s voice called out, “Joel? You turned yet?”

He sat up, smiling wryly, and said, “No. Still here.”

The door opened to reveal Olivia standing next to a slight Latino. She was carrying a black medical bag.

“Joel, right?” the man said. At Joel’s nod, he held out his hand. “Esteban. Welcome. I thought we could talk while Dr. Brenham examined you, kill two birds with one stone.”

Joel shook Esteban’s hand, and raised his eyebrows at Olivia. “ _Doctor_ Brenham?”

She smiled and gave a little shrug. “We all wear a lot of hats here. I’m just going to give you a routine physical, and check you over for bites. If you’ll take your shirt off, I can get started.”

“You ain’t gonna buy me dinner first?” Joel unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders.

Olivia smirked and looked at Esteban. “Oh, he’s got a sense of humor. I told you you’d like him.” She pulled a blood pressure cuff out of her bag and fitted it to Joel’s arm, then hooked a stethoscope into her ears and slipped the diaphragm under the cuff.

Esteban leaned back against the wall and said, “So, Joel, you’ve already got Ellie’s recommendation, which in my book is a plus. She was a valuable member of the community while she was here, even with her...condition. And you’ve made it this long after the outbreak, which means you’re a survivor. We’re always willing to welcome good people.”

As the blood pressure cuff tightened around his arm, Joel hesitated, thinking of the shit he and Tommy had done as hunters, then said, “I don’t know I’m exactly good people.”

Esteban glanced at Olivia, who gave him a small nod, still listening through the stethoscope.

“I appreciate your telling the truth. I don’t give a shit about your past, we’ve all had to do things we’d rather not have done to make it here, but as long as you understand that here in our community we don’t tolerate violence against each other, or lying, I think you’ll get along fine here.”

Joel nodded. “I can live with that. How does the division of labor work here?”

Olivia stowed the blood pressure cuff back in her black bag and moved behind Joel, saying, “I’m going to listen to your lungs.” The stethoscope was cold against his back. “Deep breath. And another.”

Esteban answered Joel, “We rotate everyone around, so nobody gets stuck doing something they don’t like for too long. Farming, hunting, guard duty, kitchen duty, maintenance, childcare. If you’ve got any special skills we should consider, let me know.”

“I’m a fair hunter, and I worked construction, doin’ mostly carpentry, before. I...I’d rather not work around kids, if that’s all right,” Joel said.

Esteban opened his mouth to respond, but Olivia interrupted him, saying, “Reduced lung capacity, Esteban.”

He snapped his mouth shut and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You maybe inhale some spores, Joel?”

“What? No!” Joel said. “There was this blue shit in Alpine…”

“Look at his nailbeds, Esteban,” Olivia said.

Joel held his hands up. For the first time, he noticed that his nailbeds had a distinct blue tint. “What the fuck?”

Esteban laughed. “Oh, you rode the Blue Loco! I thought we marked all the buildings that were contaminated.”

“Yeah, well you missed the back doors,” Joel said.

“Don’t worry, Joel. We got maybe fifteen people here been exposed to Blue Loco over the years. None of ‘em died from it, but they tell me it’s one hell of a ride.” Esteban laughed again.

Joel grimaced. “What the hell is it?”

“Who the fuck knows, man? The government did some crazy shit trying to contain the CBI, and nothing even slowed it down. Whatever that shit is, I’d stay away from it in the future. Next time we send a team up to scavenge in Alpine, you can show us which back doors to mark…” Esteban broke off at the sound of an air horn, three long blasts, then a pause, and then three more. He swore. “Fuck.”

Olivia stood up, her eyes wide with alarm. “That’s the guard post. Casey’s still down there by himself.”

“What’s going on?” Joel asked.

“Infected. Every so often a group makes its way up here from Terlingua. Guess we’ll continue this later.”

“I can help,” Joel said, slipping his shirt back on and buttoning it up.

Esteban looked him up and down, then said, “Yeah, all right. You gotta be in quarantine anyway. Grab whatever gear you need and let’s go.”

Joel only stopped long enough to pick up his shotgun, a Remington 870, from outside the door and fill his pockets with with the last of his shells, and then he hurried after Esteban in the direction of the road.

* * *

The three of them were joined by a group of four or five more people running for the sound of the air horn, but Esteban waved them off. “Simon, come with us. The rest of you, get everyone else inside!”

As they crested the hill, they saw Casey scrabbling for purchase in a pine tree, a group of infected fighting and pushing each other to get to the trunk. Casey yelped as a tall runner caught hold of his dangling foot and almost wrenched him out of the tree. Fuck, there were a lot of them. Ten, at a glance, six runners and four of those fucking creepy clicker things.

"These ain't very good odds, Esteban," Joel said. "Maybe we should get a few more people..." 

"No time for that. God damn it. Biggest group we've had in a long time." Esteban cursed and turned to the group. “All right, no Molotovs. We can’t risk starting a forest fire. We’ll draw their attention and just gun them down when they rush us. Everybody ready?”

Joel gripped the stock of his shotgun and patted his pocket to check that the spare shells were there, then gave Esteban a terse nod.

They fanned out across the road, and then Esteban shouted, “Hey, assholes!”

The infected around the tree turned en masse. The runners came at them all at once, the clickers trailing behind with their jerky, unbalanced gait. Joel unloaded a shot into one runner’s chest while Esteban fired a spray of bullets from his AR-15, taking down two more. Olivia was standing back, coolly lining up shots at the back of the pack with her hunting rifle. Simon had a pistol, but he was nervous and his shots were going wide. One runner took a pistol slug in its shoulder, but that barely slowed it down. Joel pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell and chambering a new one. He shot another runner in the head, not even flinching as the thing’s skull dissolved into a spray of red gore. A third runner got close, but went down with a quickly aimed shot to the leg; at this range the buckshot was traveling fast enough to shred its leg and probably break the bone too. Olivia shifted her aim to take down a runner that had gotten too close and was now grappling with Simon.

The clickers were getting closer, but when Joel unloaded a shell at the nearest one, the shot barely fazed the thing. He swore. He'd timed it wrong. It was still too far away for him to penetrate the fucking fungal plates that acted like armor. Only one shell left in the shotgun, and he'd better make it count. Olivia was swearing a blue streak as she fumbled while reloading her rifle, dropping a handful of bullets on the cracked asphalt. Joel stepped in front of her as the clicker he’d shot made a dash at them, and it was almost on top of him when he finally got the end of the shotgun lined up and pulled the trigger, knocking it onto its back as pieces of bone and fungal pads exploded all over him. A second clicker was right behind the first one, though, and he was too slow and out of ammo.

Its gnarled hands closed like vises on his shoulders, painfully digging into his flesh, while its horrifically split face gaped wide, jagged teeth dripping thick saliva on his cheek as it reared back to bite him. Joel pushed ineffectively against its chest, but it was like pushing back against a tree, albeit one that was writhing and bucking under its bark. Joel fought back desperately, with all of his strength, but he could tell it wouldn’t be enough, and as the awful teeth started their descent toward his blood-spattered neck, he experienced a moment of total calm and clarity.

He could finally stop fighting.

He didn’t stop struggling, but that thought somehow made his imminent demise easier to bear. At the last second he closed his eyes.

He heard the clicker’s teeth snap on thin air, and then heard its squeal of rage and pain as it let go of his shoulders and fell heavily against him, shaking in its death throes. When Joel looked down, there was a fixed-blade hunting knife buried in the base of the thing’s skull. He looked around, bewildered.

Olivia was standing over the dead clicker, shaking like a leaf. All of the infected were dead, and the four of them were still standing. Casey was sliding down from the tree. As Olivia leaned down to retrieve her knife from the clicker, Joel realized that Esteban was asking him a question.

“What?” Joel felt dazed.

“I said, were you bitten? Or scratched?”

Joel shook his head, and then ran shaking fingers over his neck and arms. “No. I don’t think so. Do you see anything?”

Esteban said, “I’ll check you, you check me.” He turned to Simon and Olivia. “You guys do the same.”

Casey had ambled up to meet them. “What about me?”

Esteban shot him a sly smile. “Oh, I get to check you out, big guy.”

The flirtation broke the tension they all felt, and they all laughed, except Simon. He was standing apart from them, his left hand curled into a fist. The nailbeds of his fingernails, Joel noticed, were blue, like his own. He must have been one of the people Esteban had mentioned, who’d also been exposed to that blue crap in Alpine at some point. And then he noticed the blood dripping from Simon’s closed fist.

Olivia saw it the same time he did, and gasped, “Simon.”

Simon opened his fist. Blood flowed sluggishly from the wound on his index finger and palm, a wound that was unmistakably a bite.

“Oh, fuck,” Casey said.

Esteban took Simon’s pistol from his unresisting right hand, and said, “I’m sorry, Simon. I’ll make sure Abby and Jean are taken care of.” Simon nodded.

And then, before anyone could say anything else, Esteban pointed the pistol at Simon’s head and pulled the trigger.

“Fuck!” Joel’s mouth hung open in shock.

Esteban turned to him. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for infected. That’s the price of admission.”

Joel snapped his mouth shut. The same thing used to happen when members of his hunter crew got bitten, he just wasn’t expecting it in a group that seemed so much more...civilized. He nodded to Esteban, not trusting his own voice.

“Come on,” Esteban said. “We all need to get into quarantine. I’ll send a cleanup crew down here for the bodies.”

* * *

By the time Joel got out of quarantine, the word had spread how he’d handled himself against the infected, and he was easily accepted into the community. He still found himself ill at ease with the children, five in all, but his duties mostly kept him out of their way, except at mealtimes. Even then, most of the kids avoided him, but he liked to sit and chat with Olivia, and that meant putting up with Lucy too. The four-year-old seemed to have a bit of a hero-worship thing going for Auntie Ellie, who lived in the mountains by herself and had her very own horse, and Joel was a celebrity by proxy, just by virtue of knowing her.

Olivia and Ellie had come to the Chisos together, it turned out, although Olivia flatly refused to talk about where they’d been before they came here, and was vague on why Ellie had left again and struck out on her own. Joel wondered if it had something to do with Esteban’s zero-tolerance policy, but it seemed like everyone here knew Ellie was infected while she was living here, and no one except Casey had anything bad to say about her. Ellie seemed to have been an exception to Esteban’s rule.

He’d been there a month already the night that Lucy just walked up to him during dinner and climbed into his lap, saying in her childish lisp, “Tell me more about Ellie and Louise. Do they sleep in the cave together?”

Joel looked down at the little girl, momentarily at a loss. Olivia noticed his discomfort, and said, “Lucy, sweetheart, let’s not bother Joel…”

“No, it’s okay.” He surprised himself when he said it. Gingerly, he readjusted Lucy into a more comfortable position, trying not to think about how many times he’d held Sarah like this when she was little. “You want a story about Ellie and Louise?”

The four-year-old nodded solemnly and popped her thumb in her mouth, a gesture so like Sarah’s at that age that Joel’s mind howled at him. He kept his body steady and his face and voice calm. “You’re gonna have to do me one little favor, though, junebug.” He put his hand on hers and gently removed her thumb from her mouth. “No sucking your thumb while I tell a story.”

Lucy stuck out her lower lip. “Why?”

 _Oh, the neverending whys._ He’d almost forgotten that. His eyes flicked to Olivia, who was watching him as avidly as her daughter was, and he decided to be honest, at least as much as he could be. “Because it reminds me of someone I used to know, and that makes me sad.”

Instead of asking why again, or worse, who, Lucy reached up with her tiny hand, still slightly damp from her mouth, and patted his cheek. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t be sad.”

She settled back down onto his lap, which gave Joel a chance to swallow the lump in his throat before he said, “Ellie and Louise, huh? You sure you don’t want a story about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? I think I remember how that one goes.”

Lucy twisted around to look at him in dismay. “No, Joel! I want Auntie Ellie!” Her green eyes filled with tears.

“Easy now, kiddo, I was only teasin’, sorry. Settle down.” He took a deep breath while she got comfortable again, and then said, “Well, did you know that your auntie saved my life?”

“She did?”

“It’s true. I’d run out of water, and my horse died…”

“What was your horse’s name?”

“Uh…” Joel had never bothered naming his horse, but it seemed important to Lucy, so he made one up on the spot. “Screwball. So I…”

She giggled. “Screwball? That’s funny.”

Joel arranged his face in a ferocious frown. “You wanna hear this story or not?”

“Yes.” She giggled again. “Screwball.”

Despite himself, Joel found himself smiling. Lucy’s laughter was infectious. “All right, then. Stop interruptin’. Anyway, your Auntie Ellie found me and took me back to her cave, and gave me some water. After she tied me up, of course.” Lucy’s eyes went wide, but she kept her mouth clamped shut. “Well, I was a stranger back then. She was only bein’ careful. She untied me after I convinced her I was okay. But then she had to go huntin’ for food. Ellie is real good with a bow, she does most of her huntin’ with one, which is good because it’s quieter than a gun.”

Lucy looked at Olivia and said, “Mama, I want to shoot a bow.”

Olivia was taken aback. “Maybe when you’re a little older, peanut.”

Joel could tell by the stubborn set of Lucy’s jaw that Olivia hadn’t heard the last of the bow conversation, and he was a little sorry for instigating it. “Anyway, I was still hurt, so I waited while Ellie and Louise went huntin’. This next part is what Ellie told me. She and Louise rode up and down for hours, and didn’t see anything worth shootin’. So Ellie said to Louise, ‘Girl, we’ll just have to go a little further than we usually do, if that’s okay with you.’”

“What did Louise say?”

“Louise...she’s a horse, junebug. Horses don’t talk, you know that.”

Lucy’s eyes turned stormy and she frowned. “Louise talks to Ellie. I know it.”

Joel gave in. “Okay. Louise said, uh, ‘It’s awful hot out here, Ellie. I’d rather go on home.’” He tried doing a dopey voice for Louise.

Lucy glared at him. “Louise doesn’t talk like that. Just talk normal.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re all kinds of bossy, ain’t you? Where was I?”

“Louise wanted to go home,” she prompted.

“Right. But Ellie told her ‘No, I’m going to be too hungry tonight if we go home. We have to find some food.’ So they kept going, further than ever, and that’s when Ellie saw the javelina tracks. A javelina’s a kind of a…”

“I _know_ what a javelina is. I’m not a baby.”

Joel raised his eyebrows at Olivia, who grinned and shrugged. “Well. Ellie climbed down off Louise and crept forward as quiet as you like, followin’ those tracks, and she finally came across a whole group of ‘em, coolin’ off in a waller, gettin’ all muddy. So she lines up her shot, cool as you please, and lets loose, and she gets her the plumpest, tenderist javelina in the group.”

Lucy clapped her hands.

“But then, somethin’ scary happened. She was walkin’ over to pick up her javelina, when a shot rang out and a slug hit her in the arm! Ellie ran for cover…”

Lucy gasped. “What about Louise?”

“Aw, Louise was all right. She was a ways away, waitin’ for Ellie to finish huntin’, so she was never in no danger. Anyway, Ellie runs for cover, and this bandit, who’d been hidden, runs out after her, tryin’ to kill her! Only, he don’t know how good Ellie is with a bow, or how fast she is, so it comes as a surprise when she turns around and buries an arrow right in his throat.” Joel smiled fiercely, but when he caught Olivia’s horrified stare, his smile faded. This may not have been the appropriate story to choose to tell a four-year-old. In his defense, he was out of practice.

Lucy didn’t seem to mind. She was doing a little dance on his lap and chanting, “Yes, yes, yes! Auntie Ellie is the best!” She turned to him, her eyes shining, and said, “What happened next?”

“Ah…” Joel looked uncomfortably at Olivia, who had buried her head in her hands in a classic parent’s “Lord give me strength” pose. “Well, not much left to tell. She brought that javelina back to the cave, and I stitched up her shoulder and cooked the javelina for supper. It was delicious. Uh, the end.”

Joel went to push Lucy off his lap, but she flung her arms around his neck and said, “No! Can I have another story?”

“Not tonight,” Olivia said firmly. “It’s time for bed.”

“But Mooooom…”

“Bed. And thank Joel for the story.”

Lucy gave Joel a wet smack on the cheek. “Thanks, Joel. You can tell me another one tomorrow.” She slid off his lap.

“G’night,” he said faintly.

Olivia kissed the top of her head. “Run along back to the cottage and get your jammies on. I’ll be right behind you.” Lucy ran for the door, and Olivia skewered Joel with her eyes, eyebrows raised.

“Uh, sorry about that,” he said. “I wasn’t thinkin’...”

Olivia waved her hand. “The story? Believe me, she’s heard worse. We can’t protect kids from stuff like that, Joel, not any more. Not if we want them to survive. No...I was more surprised when you said that you stitched Ellie up. You knew she was infected?”

Joel shrugged. “I was careful. Besides, she was makin’ a mess of it herself.”

Olivia stared at him until Joel shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You’re...full of surprises, Joel. So why did you leave? I just assumed all this time it was because you found out she was infected.”

He shook his head. “No, I found that out pretty early on. Fact, I think that’s why she let me stay in the first place. But then I…” What? What could he tell Olivia? He didn’t understand what had happened himself. “I guess she decided she’d rather be alone,” he finally said. “‘Scuse me.” He pushed his chair back from the table, carried his plate into the kitchen to wash it, and left without another word, heading back to the motel room he called home these days.

* * *

Tommy’s birthday, November 15th, came and went with no one to mark its significance but Joel. He wondered how many other unmarked graves dotted the country, and how many were for people with no one left to mourn their passing. He was still in a dark mood a week later, when he pulled solo hunting duty in the bottom of the valley for the week, which suited him fine. He preferred to be alone when he felt like this, when the past was harder to keep at bay.

The trail down the valley was steep and Joel was alone, so he was especially careful about where he was putting his feet. It would take him ages to haul himself back up to the lodge with a busted ankle. Today he was collecting small game, which meant he was carrying a .22 rifle and checking the rabbit snares he’d laid down the day before.

Joel liked hunting alone. It was different than traveling alone on the deteriorating highways of a dying civilization; out here, where the hand of man had never penetrated very deeply, it was almost like the outbreak had never happened, and hunting kept his mind busy so his thoughts didn’t stray too much to Tommy or Sarah. Or Ellie.

It had been a productive day. He had five fat rabbits and eight ground squirrels tucked into his backpack, a welcome contribution to the kitchen, but instead of starting back he’d decided to follow the trail down to its terminus for the first time. He was on a trail that was marked “The Window” in the park guides, and it dipped down into the heart of the valley before meeting up with the creek that drained out of the basin through a narrow notch in the enclosing ridges. The last time Joel had hunted down here, Casey had given him a huge ration of shit for not going all the way to the end of the trail to see the Window itself, and since the weather was crisp and pleasant today, at least for late-November, Joel had decided to take in the view for himself.

He was watching his footing on the treacherous slickrock canyon of the creekbed, so he was almost on top of the Window before he looked up and actually saw it: a deep, V-shaped notch in the mountain, maybe five feet across at the height of his shoulders. He stepped as close to the edge as he could get on the wet rock, worn smooth over millions of years as the water that collected in the basin succumbed to gravity and sought the desert floor below.

At the edge, the water tumbled down the near-vertical rock face to the Chihuahuan Desert, five thousand feet below, and the sides of the Window framed a panoramic view so stunning that Joel’s breath caught in his throat. _Sarah would have loved this,_ he thought. _Always meant to take her here._ Joel clenched his fists. Down here, alone, miles away from anyone, he could finally allow himself to feel, and as always, the deep well of grief and regret he carried from Sarah’s loss was the first thing that rose to the surface. _I’m sorry I spent so much time at work, baby girl. I thought I was making a better life for you, but I just missed so damn much._

He unpacked his memories of Sarah reverently, like he was opening a treasure box. He smiled as he remembered their camping trip to Lost Maples, when Sarah had made them both crowns out of fallen maple leaves and they’d worn them all day, even into the burger joint they’d visited for dinner. The other diners had given them the side-eye like crazy, but he hadn’t cared. His little girl was happy, and that was the only important thing in the world.

God, he missed her.

He stood there for a long time as the shadows lengthened, watching the sun start to set over the desert, the only sound the chuckle of water echoing against the canyon walls.

He almost had a heart attack when he turned around to start his steep climb back up to the lodge and saw Ellie standing there watching him, not fifteen feet away.

“Jesus Christ, Ellie!”

She smiled and gave him an uncertain wave. “Hi.”

Joel’s heart was still pounding. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Olivia said you were down here. I thought you might want company on the way back up.”

“I…no, I meant, what are you doing _here_ , in the Chisos?” Joel was having trouble marshalling his thoughts. Over the months since he’d left her, Ellie had never been far from his mind, and just turning around and finding her standing there made him feel a little like he was hallucinating again, or losing his mind.

“Oh, I come down a couple times a year to see...everybody, and trade. Stuff like that. Nobody told you?”

Joel felt a stab of anger, and he held onto it, tight. Anger was safe. “No. It ain’t like that note you left me was heavy on the details.”

She looked down guiltily. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. I, uh...I was in kind of a bad space.”

 _What the hell happened?_ Now that Ellie was finally here in front of him, the question that had been burning a hole in his mind ever since their last night together could finally be answered, but he didn’t ask it. Instead, he turned his back on her and looked out through the Window over the darkening desert again, burying his hurt under a thick shell of anger.

He didn’t move or look at her when she joined him at his side a few minutes later, just kept his face impassive and hard until she sighed.

“So, what do you think of this place? I loved it here. I hoped you’d like it too.”

She was standing close enough that Joel could feel the heat of her body through the sleeve of his shirt. She held her hands loosely at her sides, and it would require only the tiniest movement on his part to bridge the gap between their fingers and curl his hand around hers. He clenched his hands into fists. What the hell did she want from him? Her presence at his side confused him to no end. “It’s growin’ on me. You can’t deny that view, though.”

She gave a short laugh that was more a hard exhale from her nostrils than a laugh, her lips twisted into the barest of smiles. They stood there together in silence and watched the sun slip down below the horizon, until the gray twilight blurred the line between the earth and the sky.

Joel turned and started back up the path, clicking his flashlight on to see his footing better. Ellie easily kept pace with him.

 _Why did you make me go?_ The question beat in his head like a fist. He crossed the creekbed and turned back to her, offering his hand. “Here, those rocks are slippery.”

“Pssh,” she said, by way of refusal, but her voice was more playful than scornful. “Besides, if you touch me, Esteban will throw you into quarantine.”

“Yeah?” he said, surprised, although he supposed it made sense. “Speaking of which, why aren’t you in quarantine? Didn’t you just get here from outside?”

She laughed. “What would be the point? Everyone already knows I’m infected. It’s the rest of you he needs to worry about.” Her voice was light, but Joel could hear an undercurrent of pain there, and that more than anything finally made him let go of the anger he’d been holding on to.

He didn’t ask the question he wanted to ask. Instead, he said, “Why’d you leave here in the first place, if you liked it so much?”

She shook her head. “I already told you. I got sick of worrying I was going to infect someone. And...I got tired of seeing that look in people’s eyes. The ones who know...they’re afraid of me, Joel.”

“I wasn’t,” he said quietly. _I’m not._

The path was wide enough for them to walk side by side, but it was several long moments before she answered him. “No, you weren’t.”

“Olivia’s not afraid of you either. I get the feeling you two go way back, right? And Lucy can’t get enough of stories about you.”

“Lucy asks about me?” It was too dark for him to really see her face, but he could hear the pleasure in the question, as well as a strange hitch in her voice that he couldn’t identify.

“That kid thinks you’re Wonder Woman, and she thinks I’m the most interesting man in the whole damn world, just because I spent time with you. Yeah, she asks about you all the time.” Joel didn’t notice she was no longer keeping pace with him until her heard her shuddering indrawn breath behind him.

He turned around, and she raised her hand to cover her face when his flashlight shone in her eyes, but not before he saw the tears gleaming on her cheeks. Joel was beside her before he even realized he’d moved, not touching her, but close enough to let her know he was there for her. “What is it?”

She ran the back of one shaking hand across her eyes. “You shone your fucking light in my eyes, and they teared up, that’s all.”

“Bullshit.” Joel reached out for her hand, but she flinched away.

“Esteban will…”

“What Esteban don’t know won’t hurt him.” Joel reached for her face instead, cupping his large, rough hand around the delicate line of her jaw. Warring emotions rippled across her face until she closed her eyes and leaned her cheek into his hand.

“Joel…” she whispered.

“Ellie, why’d you make me go?” The question slipped out before he knew he was going to ask it. “If I said or did anything to make you…”

“I didn’t want you to go. And that’s why you had to.” Her voice was so low he could barely hear it.

“That don’t make any kind of sense,” he growled.

“It does if you’re me, Joel!” She moved away from him, and for a second his fingers hung suspended in the air, reaching for her, until he lowered his hand again.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like, knowing you can kill the people you love, if you’re even just a little bit careless? Fuck, that night you sewed up my arm, if I’d moved a little...if you’d _scratched_ yourself with that needle, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I couldn’t live with that.” She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, her face tense and unhappy.

“So you just make the decision to send me away. Without even talkin’ to me about it.” Joel was angry again.

“I sent you _here_ , Joel. It’s a good place. I wanted to protect you.” Her face was a mask of misery, and her eyes were pleading with him to understand.

He shook his head. “No. I thought it was worth it, to stay with you. I knew about you, and I was willin’ to accept the risk because I still wanted to stay, damn it. You took that choice away from me. What the hell gives you the right?”

She spread her hands in front of her, like she was trying to ward off his words. “It was too dangerous…”

“Fuck that. You know what I think, Ellie? You got a serious martyr complex. You act like you’re making some kind of noble sacrifice, but I think you’d just rather be alone than admit you have any feelings for anybody.”

She gasped like he’d struck her, and then her jaw hardened. “You have no idea what sacrifice is.” She pushed past him and hurried up the path as fast as she could go.

“The hell I don’t!” he yelled after her. “What, you’re gonna run off again?”

“Fuck off, Joel. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“So tell me! Ellie!”

She didn’t slow down or turn around, just ran up the path like her life depended on getting away from him. Joel watched until she disappeared from sight, and then with a heavy sigh he started back up the path too, muttering to himself, “Well, that probably could’ve gone better.”

By the time he made it back up to the lodge, she was nowhere to be seen, so he dropped his catch off at the kitchen and headed back to the motel room he called home. For some reason, he didn’t feel very hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ellie has finally returned to the story, and Joel, predictably, acts like an ass. Oh, Joel. 
> 
> Unlike the 20-years-later Joel in the game, this Joel is a man whose suffering over Sarah's loss is still very much raw and near the surface, which I think would make him a bit more emotionally volatile than the version we know from the game. I hope he's coming across like that, and not just unbearably moody.


	4. He Saw Me Sinking in Distress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel finally learns what happened to Ellie during the outbreak, and it's worse than he could have imagined.

_It's fare you well to a native country_  
 _The places I have loved so well_  
 _For I have seen all kinds of trouble  
_ _In this cruel world no tongue can tell_

\- from _A Man of Constant Sorrow_ , traditional American folk song

* * *

Joel was trying to read by candlelight in his room, but his eyes kept scanning the same paragraph over and over, unable to take it in. He was still stewing about his fight with Ellie. _Damn her anyway,_ he thought. _Middle of the fucking zombie apocalypse and all I can think about is some woman I barely know._ He was just about to extinguish the candle and try to get some sleep when there was a soft knock on the door. His heart lurched, and he sat up on the sagging mattress. It was Ellie, he knew it, come back to apologize for running off again. He didn’t answer. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want to talk to him about anything important, so he was damned if he’d...

Olivia’s voice called, “Joel? Can we talk?”

Joel’s disappointment settled into the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t Ellie. Of course it wasn’t. Ellie was too fucking scared of her own shadow to come talk to him. He grunted sourly and lay back on the mattress. “Not tonight, Liv. I ain’t up to it.”

“You’d better get up to it, then. You need to hear this.” The hard edge in Olivia’s voice was one he’d never heard from her before, and it was that more than anything that propelled him to the door.

She pushed past him, and her body language told him she was hopping mad.

He stared out the open door for a moment, then sighed. “Come in.”

Olivia wheeled on him and said, “I just came from talking with Ellie…”

“She using you as a go-between? You tell her if she wants to apologize then she can damn well come herself.”

Olivia’s brown eyes snapped dangerously. “Apologize? God, if anyone needs to apologize it’s you. I knew you could be kind of an asshole, Joel, but I never had you pegged for cruel.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Joel’s jaw jutted truculently, and he folded his arms across his chest.

“No, you don’t. And that’s the whole problem, really.” Olivia sighed, the anger draining out of her face. “I...look. Ellie doesn’t like to talk about her past, but I’d like to set a few things straight before you two idiots rip each other apart. If she knew I was here, if she knew what I was about to tell you...she’d murder me in my sleep.”

Joel wasn’t quite ready to let go of his anger, but he closed the door and settled back down on his bed with a grunt. “You gonna give me some answers? You gonna tell me why she’s so determined to be alone? Fine. I’m all ears.”

Olivia’s lips compressed into a hard line. “You keep saying that. You need to know you’re under a misapprehension. Ellie doesn’t want to be alone. It’s the last thing she wants.”

Joel’s fists uncurled. He hadn’t even realized his hands were clenched. Joel looked down at his blue nailbeds. If Ellie didn’t want to be alone, then that meant...“Then it’s just me she doesn’t want around,” he said, with difficulty. Of course. He’d been right in the beginning. He’d just misread Ellie back on the trail, and embarrassed himself in the process.

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Joel, believe it or not, the world doesn’t revolve around you.” She pulled up the only chair in the room and sat. For the first time, he noticed that she was carrying a half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey and a digital video camera, one of the handheld ones with a flip screen. She held out the camera. “This has some answers. And this,” she offered the bottle, “is to soften the blow. My secret stash. Which one do you want first?”

Without saying anything, Joel took the bottle from her and unscrewed the cap, tipping it to his lips and taking a big swig. The strong liquor made his eyes water. “Jesus. Been a while since I had somethin’ like that.” He looked at Olivia, but her deep brown eyes were inscrutable. “So, you gonna tell me what this is all about?”

“You need to watch this,” she handed him the video camera, “but I should give you a little background first.” Olivia took the whiskey bottle back from him and took a healthy pull, looking like she was steeling herself.

Joel leaned back against the wall. “All right. I’ll bite.”

“I met Ellie during the early stages of the outbreak, in Atlanta. Her parents brought her to the CDC after she was bitten but didn’t turn. I was a pathologist, and we were desperately trying to understand CBI and figure out a vaccine or a cure, or even some kind of treatment to slow it down. Ellie was the first of the immune survivors to come to us, but there were more as the outbreak spread. At the peak of the program, we had almost three hundred immune. One of the reasons CBI is so effective is that the fungus secretes a compound that suppresses the host’s immune system, which makes it almost impossible to fight off. The immune survivors all carry a mutated gene that makes them resistant to the immunosuppression compound, but the mutation is extremely rare; we estimated that only 2 hundredths of a percent of the population carried the gene. That’s two hundred people in a _million_ , Joel. And only a fraction of those people ever made it to us. When Atlanta fell, FEDRA took over the CDC and moved our whole operation to Roswell.”

“Bullshit,” Joel said, his voice angrier than he meant it to be. “You’re telling me there are hundreds of people, maybe more, immune to CBI? If that’s true, why didn’t FEDRA _tell_ anyone about it?”

“Think about it, Joel. Two hundred people in a million are immune. If you’re FEDRA, your mission is to contain the infection. Given that a not-insignificant percentage of people who are infected choose to end their own lives before they turn, do you really want to be giving people hope that they’re one of those two hundred in a million?” She shook her head. “By the time they moved us to Roswell, everything was so bad that they just stopped looking for more immune survivors. They had to concentrate on containment, and protecting the survivors we did have.”

Joel felt sick. There were people out there who were immune and they didn’t even know it? “But that’s…”

“...monstrous?” Olivia finished. She sighed. “Yes. I’m not defending what they...what we did. We were ten steps behind this disease the whole way. No one understood in the beginning how fast everything was happening, and by the time we did, it was far too late.”

“So you studied the immune.”

Olivia passed a hand over her face. “We did more than that, Joel. I did a lot of things back then that I’m not very proud of. We experimented on them, and we made them do things that…” she trailed off, shame clear on her face.

Joel wasn’t going to let her off that easily. “Like what?” He glowered at her.

Olivia’s voice lowered to almost a whisper. “We...we had a group of...volunteers at the compound. Non-immune survivors, who were willing to risk their lives for scientific experiment. We experimented with bite wounds, blood transfer, sexual contact; we were still trying to understand how contagious the infection was in the immune.”

Joel was horrified. “You made Ellie bite healthy people? Just to see if they’d get infected? And what the hell do you mean by sexual contact?”

“Ellie never had to bite anyone. But others did, yes. We encouraged promiscuity among the immune and between them and the non-immune volunteers.”

“That’s sick,” Joel said.

“You have no idea, Joel.” Olivia’s eyes were hollow and haunted. “It took a toll on everyone, and the volunteer program dried up as soon as it became clear that even minimal contact with body fluids from an immune survivor caused infection in the non-immune. An open-mouthed kiss, a tiny prick with a dirty needle, contact with sexual fluids. That’s when Dr. Singleton, the man in charge of the contagion study, shut it down and changed it into a breeding program.”

“A breeding program,” Joel said flatly.

Olivia wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We had a hundred female immune of childbearing age. We convinced them it was their duty to try and make more.”

“Jesus.” Joel felt sick to his stomach. He thought of the stretch marks he’d glimpsed on Ellie’s stomach. “So Ellie…”

Olivia gestured to the video camera. “Go ahead, it’s cued up to the right spot.”

Joel opened the flip screen for the camera and pressed the play button.

_Ellie sat in white room on a plastic chair that was the only piece of furniture. She was wearing some kind of gray uniform, and her stomach bulged under the shapeless shirt. She was unmistakably pregnant._

_Olivia’s voice came from behind the camera. “Subject IS-1, Ellie Williams, age seventeen. Thirty weeks along, no complications. Psychological profile number four, conducted by Dr. Olivia Brenham.”_

_Ellie smiled and gave a little wave. “Hi, Dr. B.”_

Jesus. She looked so fucking young. Too young to be that pregnant. Joel smiled wryly. He’d been only seventeen when Sarah was born; apparently he and Ellie had more in common than he realized.

_Olivia chuckled. “Hi, Ellie. How are you feeling today?”_

_Ellie grimaced. “Well, the cankles are the worst, you know? And I’m the size of a fucking whale, but that kinda goes with the territory.”_

_“So do cankles, I hate to tell you,” Olivia said._

_Ellie looked at the camera. “Did you ever have kids, Doc?”_

_There was a heavy pause, and then Olivia said, “We’re not here to talk about that. Nurse Randall says you’ve been having nightmares again. You need to get the proper rest. What have you been dreaming about?”_

_Ellie looked down at her belly, running a hand over the round top of it. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she mumbled._

_“Come on, Ellie,” Olivia’s voice was gently chiding. “It’s better to get it off your chest. What are you afraid of?”_

_Ellie looked up at the camera again, but her eyes were veiled, and she wore a hard smirk on her face. “Well, scorpions are pretty creepy.”_

_There was another long moment of silence, and then she dropped her eyes to her pregnant belly again, both hands pressed protectively over it. “Being by myself.” It came out as barely a whisper. She raised her eyes to the camera again, and this time they were naked with an intense emotion that was halfway between fear and anger. “I’m scared of ending up alone.”_

_“Is that what your dreams are about? Being alone?”_

_Ellie nodded. She swallowed, hard, and said, “I wake up in my room, and the baby’s gone. And then when I go to the door, the guards aren’t there. So I go down the hallway to the cafeteria, and I start to get more and more scared, and that’s when I hear the moans from the yard. And when I look out the window, I can see that the whole facility is surrounded by infected, and then I realize that they’re the people I know...Armin, Felicia, Candace...you. Everyone here, except me. And that’s…” Ellie’s voice cracked. “That’s when I usually wake up.”_

_“Ellie.” Olivia’s voice was gentle. “Armin, Felicia, and Candace are all immune, like you. That dream can never come true.”_

_Ellie nodded. “I know. I don’t think it’s really about them. I think it’s about…” She rubbed her belly again, then looked directly into the camera. “Liv...what happened to Maya? Really? Was her baby infected?”_

_Olivia didn’t answer at first, but then her voice came from behind the camera again. “Yes.”_

_Ellie’s eyes filled with tears and she dropped her head, squeezing her stomach. “I’m afraid that’s going to happen to me,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to her die. I don’t know how to protect her from myself.”_

_Olivia came out from behind the camera and pulled Ellie up into a tight hug. “All the tests say she’s perfectly normal.”_

_Ellie sniffed. “I know but...ugh.” She pushed herself away from Olivia and wiped her eyes. “Crap. Sorry. Fucking hormones. At least tears aren’t infectious, right?”_

_“What happened to Nurse Jessup wasn’t your fault, Ellie.”_

_Ellie’s eyes went flat again, and she said, bleakly, “It was my blood.”_

Olivia leaned over and pressed the stop button. “There’s more, but that’s the part I wanted you to see.”

Joel stared at the dark flip screen, feeling like a chasm was opening up in his chest. Ellie didn’t want to be alone. It was the last thing she wanted, what she was most afraid of. So why had she chosen it? “What happened with Nurse Jessup?”

“Sophia was one of the FEDRA nurses. She was doing a routine blood draw on Ellie when she accidentally pricked herself with a dirty needle. We weren’t sure at first if that would be enough to transfer the disease, but it was.” Olivia’s lips were compressed into a bitter frown. “Ellie never forgave herself.”

Joel thought of the night he’d stitched Ellie’s arm for her, and what had seemed like her unreasonable panic when she saw his gloved hands covered in her blood. He squeezed his eyes shut. “It wasn’t her fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was a simple accident. Sophia had done fifty other blood draws that day, all on immune patients. But Ellie doesn’t see it that way.”

Joel slumped over and held his head in his hands. He didn’t know if he wanted the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway. “What happened to Ellie’s baby?”

Olivia’s face was blank, but her eyes were deep wells of pain. “Ellie had three pregnancies in the breeding program. The first, she miscarried at sixteen weeks. The third she carried almost to term, but it was infected in the womb. The complications almost killed her. We managed to save her life, but it left her sterile.”

“And the second?”

Olivia drank another swallow of whiskey. “The second was a beautiful, full-term, healthy, immune, non-infected baby girl.”

“Ellie had a daughter?” The news made his chest ache. A memory of holding Sarah as a baby flashed through his mind.

Olivia didn’t answer him. Her voice turned bitter. “After her third pregnancy, she was no longer useful for the breeding program, so Dr. Singleton turned her over to the surgery department to remove the Cordyceps in her body for further study.”

“But...it grows all over the brain.” Joel frowned.

Olivia’s voice was remote. “It does.”

Wordlessly, Joel took the whiskey bottle back from Olivia and took a big slug.

“I couldn’t let them…” Olivia passed a shaking hand over her face. “She’d been through too much already. So the three of us escaped together.”

“The three of you…” With an almost audible click, the clues he’d been given snapped into clear focus. “Lucy,” he breathed. “Lucy is Ellie’s daughter.” He should have known. They had the exact same eyes.

Olivia nodded. “Nobody here knows, Joel. The community thinks that Lucy is mine. Her father was African-American, so she looks enough like me that nobody asks questions. Ellie thought it would be safer for her that way.”

“The anniversary of her freedom. That’s what she said she was celebrating, the night she…she must’ve meant...” Joel ran his hand through his hair. “That’s why she left here. She didn’t want to infect Lucy.”

Olivia nodded. “Or anybody else. But obviously Lucy was her main concern. She went and found herself a cave a hundred and fifty miles away, just so she wouldn’t be tempted to come back too often. Now, I know you lost your daughter, Joel, but can you imagine what it’s like to know your daughter is alive and well, but you can’t see her? You can’t even touch her?”

Joel eyes burned, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to keep any tears from forming. Shit. If Sarah was alive, and he couldn’t touch her, or hold her when she was scared…

He looked up at Olivia. “Where’s Ellie now?”

Olivia screwed the cap back onto the bottle of whiskey and set it down on the bed next to Joel. “She stays in room 205 when she visits.” She stood up, pushing the chair back and picking up the video camera. “She likes whiskey.”

Joel didn’t look up again, but when he heard the door shut softly behind Olivia, he stood up and walked over to the mirror that hung above the small dresser.

There was gray in his hair and beard. He didn’t know when it had started creeping in, but it was there now, silver threads among the black. He still kept his hair trimmed short—less for someone to grab in a fight—but it was choppily cut and sticking out above his ears. He had a smudge of dirt on his cheekbone from god knows where. He combed his fingers through his hair to smooth it a bit, then poured a little water onto a washcloth, rubbing it over his face to remove some of the accumulated grime.

When he was finished, he was somewhat cleaner and more presentable. He sighed at his face in the mirror. “C’mon, Joel. It ain’t like it’s a date.”

He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and headed out the door.

* * *

Room 205 was up the stairs and on the opposite side of the building from his room, but the walk still felt too short to Joel. He hesitated for almost a full minute outside her door before he rapped lightly on the wood with his knuckles. “Ellie?”

Her voice was muffled, be he distinctly heard her say, “Go away.”

“I got something for you.” He hoped the whiskey would be enough of a peace offering to get him through the door. He had one hell of an apology to make.

Ellie wrenched the door open. He could tell by her red eyes and puffy face that she’d been crying, but the glare she raked him with was pure fury. Her eyes fell on the whiskey bottle in his outstretched hand. Without saying a word, she jerked the bottle out of his hand, backed up a step, and slammed the door right in his face.

“Ellie!” He knocked harder this time. “C’mon!” The only answer was silence.

Joel leaned his forehead against the peeling paint on the door and sighed. “Ellie,” he said, “I know I been…” He stopped again. Joel wasn’t good at apologies. More than anything else, they made him feel vulnerable, and if there was one thing he’d learned growing up with his abusive tyrant of a father, it was never to show vulnerability. Ironically, the personality trait that had led to the ruinous breakup of more relationships than he could count was something that had helped keep him alive during the past six years. But it was certainly not helping him now.

He tried again. “I know I had no right to speak to you the way I did.” He paused, searching for the words that would make her open the door. _I’m sorry. How the fuck hard is that to say, Joel?_ “I’m s—, I’m sure you don’t want to talk to me right now...god damn it. I wanted to say…”

He caught his balance as the door swung violently open again.  

Ellie stood in the doorway, still glaring at him, but it looked more like exasperation than fury this time. “That has got to be the worst fucking attempt at an apology I’ve ever heard.”

Joel grimaced. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

Ellie’s eyes widened and the corner of her mouth quirked up. “See? How hard was that?”

Joel looked down, a wry smile on his face. “Yeah. Sorry.” He looked back up at her. Christ, her eyes were beautiful, a deep green he could just fall into. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know about...everything. I made some assumptions and I was wrong, and I was an asshole to you. I’m really sorry, Ellie. I didn’t know about...” He looked around him, but no one else was in sight. He still lowered his voice to say, “I didn’t know about Lucy.”

Panic flashed in Ellie’s eyes, and she grabbed Joel’s arm and pulled him forcibly into the room, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell do you think you’re talking about?”

Joel kept his voice low. “Lucy. I know she’s your daughter. Olivia…”

“I am going to fucking _kill_ her.” Ellie’s eyes were hard as agate.

"Don’t take it out on her,” Joel said. “She was just tryin’ to get me to understand exactly what a  monumental a fuckup I am.”

“She had no fucking right…”

“It’s her story too, Ellie,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know how you do it.”

That caught her attention. She started pacing the room, her every movement full of agitation. “I come down here every few months, and every time she remembers me a little less. She’s a little bigger and I’m a little more of a stranger. I missed her first steps, Joel. I’m missing everything.” Her distress was naked on her face.

“But Olivia said that Lucy was immune too. I don’t understand why you can’t just…”

“Yes, she’s immune. But not infected, and I want to keep it that way. Haven’t you ever noticed there aren’t any infected little kids running around? Just adults.”

Joel frowned. He’d never thought about it, but Ellie was right. He’d never seen a little kid who was infected. “No, no kids. Why?”

“That’s because the younger you are, the more likely the fungus will just kill you outright. Death rate for kids under ten who contract the disease is almost 100%. I don’t know if Lucy’s immune system would be able to fight it off, and even those fuckers back in Roswell weren’t big enough assholes to try infecting a baby, just to check. So I can’t be around her. I can’t even touch her.” Ellie’s voice was edged with fury, but Joel could hear despair there too.

“That kid adores you,” Joel said.

“Yeah, because I’m her fun Auntie Ellie.” She picked up a book off her nightstand and hurled it at the wall. “Weird Auntie Ellie who lives in a cave.” A glass followed the book and shattered against the wall. “Crazy Auntie Ellie who lives all alone and talks to her fucking horse.” She looked around desperately for something else to throw.

When she grabbed the half-full bottle of whiskey, Joel said, “No! You’re gonna regret it if you throw that.”

She looked down at the bottle in her hand, and then slumped down to the bed, all the anger drained out of her. “That was my only glass,” she said, rolling the bottle between her hands.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I had some earlier.”

Ellie sighed. She unscrewed the cap and took a long pull from the bottle. “I miss her every day, Joel. Every fucking day. Coming down here just makes it worse.” She took another long drink.

“I know what it’s like to miss your daughter every day,” Joel said quietly.

She looked up at him, horrified. “Oh, god, Joel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I forgot. If I lost Lucy, I don’t know what I’d do.”

He leaned against the wall, the familiar ache in his chest settling in at the thought of Sarah. “You just...you just keep findin’ something to fight for. I guess. I don’t know.” He pressed his knuckles into his eyes, hard enough to see stars. “Some days are easier than others. But bein’ around other people helps, Ellie.”

She took another drink, and then looked down at the bottle in her hands, saying nothing. The silence between them stretched longer and longer, until Joel said, “You don’t have to live all alone up there.”

Her eyebrows drew together like she was in pain. “Joel…”

“Ellie, let me come back. We...we understand each other. And you can’t tell me there’s nothing between us.” There. He’d said it.

She stood up, leaving the bottle on the bed. “Us? What the fuck are you talking about? There’s no us, Joel. I can’t do _us_. It’s impossible. I don’t get to have that anymore!” She was quivering with emotion, her eyes bitter and hard again.

He shook his head stubbornly. “Nobody should be alone like that.”

“ _I_ should be! You just don’t get it, Joel! I. Am. A. Danger. To. People.” She was facing him now, her toes only inches from his, and she poked him in the chest to emphasize her point.

He straightened up from the wall. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you really want to be alone up there, and I’ll drop it. I’ll never mention it again.” He searched her face intently.

Her eyes hardened even more. “I really want to be…” She stopped, and then a spasm of agony twisted her face and she looked away from him. “Joel...why are you doing this to me? What do you _want_?”

He cupped her chin with rough fingers, tipping her face up toward his again. “I want to kiss you.”

Ellie jerked away from him, recoiling in panic. “You can’t! Didn’t Olivia tell you…”

He captured her hand in his before she got completely away from him again, and said, “She did.” He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them, and then kissed her open palm. When he kissed the inside of her wrist, she shuddered, but she didn't pull away again. Taking that as a good sign, he bent down and placed another kiss on the soft skin inside her elbow. He parted his lips and tasted her skin, warm and slightly salty. She drew her breath in sharply when his tongue touched her.

He straightened up and looked at her face. Tears were streaking down her cheeks, but her eyes were filled with a hunger that made Joel want to forget everything he knew and kiss her sweet, full lips. Instead, he kissed her face everywhere but her lips, tasting her salty tears with light touches of his tongue.

“Careful,” she whispered.

“I am,” he murmured against her temple. Her body was rigid and trembling like a leaf. Which...that wasn’t exactly what he was going for, here. Ignoring the roaring of the disappointed beast in the pit of his stomach, he stepped back from her, his hands lightly resting on her shoulders. “All right?” he said.

She nodded, and then shook her head. “No. I...Joel.” She placed both hands on his chest, a gesture that both heightened the intimacy of their contact and put more distance between them. “Oh...god. I just...do you know how long it’s been...?” She shook her head again, but stroked the hard muscles of his chest with her palms. “I don’t want to infect you.”

He smiled, and said, “That’s good, because I don’t wanna get infected.”

Ellie drew a breath to speak, but he beat her to it. “We lived together for two months. We were careful, and nothing happened.”

“Yeah, but this...we weren’t…” As of their own volition, her hands moved upward and met behind his neck, and her body leaned into his. “We weren’t doing _this_." She sighed. "Damn it, I want you to kiss me.”

Joel’s hands dropped to her waist as he felt her body finally relax against him. He bent forward and kissed her jaw, just under her ear, and she rewarded him with a sharp gasp.  “Jesus!” Her head fell back, exposing the long white column of her neck.

Joel traced a line of kisses from her jaw to her collarbone, feeling the smooth muscles of her throat bunch under his lips as she swallowed. Her hips were pressed up against his, and he knew she could feel his growing need, because for a few brief, delirious seconds she pressed herself harder against him. And then her hands were on his chest again, but this time she was pushing him away.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. No, Joel. This is crazy.” Her face was flushed and her breath was coming faster than normal, but she was still pushing him away.

Even though it took every ounce of willpower he possessed, Joel stepped back from her and took his hands off her waist, swallowing hard. Christ, his jeans felt tight. “Ellie.” His voice was thick in his throat. “I know I can’t have you. Not like that. Not the way I want you. But don’t you think we can find some way to be together?”

She folded her arms around herself and shook her head again. She looked miserable. “It’s too dangerous.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, this whole fuckin’ world is dangerous,” he said, gesturing toward the door with his arm. “I’d rather spend whatever time I get before my luck runs out with someone I—” He broke off.

She looked up at him, a faint smile on her lips. “Someone you what, Joel?”

He ran his fingers over his beard. “I never been one for big declarations, Ellie. I ain’t that kinda man. I’m just tryin’ to say that I don’t mind the danger if it means I get to spend more time with you.”

She sighed and stepped in close again, until she could rest her head against his shoulder. Her arms went around his waist as she embraced him tightly. “The problem is, I mind,” she said into his shoulder. “I sent you away because I realized we were starting to fall for each other, and I couldn’t imagine seeing you every day, wanting you, and not being able to have you. Why would we do that to ourselves?”

He hugged her tightly to him and pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “Because it’s better than nothing.”

“I disagree.” She stood on her tiptoes and planted a dry kiss on his cheek. “We’d always want more. It would be torture.” Reluctantly, she left his embrace and sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s better this way. Most days you won’t even think about me.”

“You really believe that? That been true for you?”

Ellie dropped her head into her hands and bunched her fists in her short red hair. “That’s what I’m telling myself.”

She’d given him his answer, and though it wasn’t the one he wanted, the one he’d desperately hoped for, he had to respect it. “Okay.”

His hand was already on the doorknob when she said, “Wait.” He turned back toward her. Her upturned face held a pleading expression. “Don’t go.”

Fuck. What the hell did she want from him? He was frustrated and confused, and his jeans still felt too tight, and she was looking up at him with an expression that was half hunger and half despair. What did she expect?

“I don’t want to be alone.” She bit her lip and played with a loose thread at the knee of her jeans, not looking him in the eyes. “Stay. Just tonight.” She barely whispered it.

“Jesus, Ellie.” Could she possibly make this harder for him?

She smiled bitterly and laughed. “Yeah, I realized how that sounded after I said it.” She leaned back and gathered her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow before I leave.” Her eyelids were low over her eyes, so Joel would have missed her tears if he hadn’t seen the dark splotches forming on her jeans.

Joel closed his eyes briefly. For a second he was back in the dark of Ellie’s cave, listening to her try to hold back her sobs while he ached to get up and hold her.

He crossed to the bed and sat down beside her, bumping her with his hip to get a little more room. “Scoot over.”

She moved away to give him room, and when Joel put his arms around her shaking shoulders she uncurled and buried her face in his chest. He leaned back against the wall and stretched his legs out on the bed, stroking her arm and holding her close. “It’s okay. I gotcha,” he murmured into her hair.

Eventually her shoulders stopped shaking. Joel couldn’t pinpoint when she slipped from exhausted crying into sleep, but he hoped that she’d reached for his hand and twined her fingers in his as a conscious act. He lay there like that, with his arms around the woman he loved but could never have, trying to feel grateful and not bitter. He was only only marginally successful.

* * *

Joel woke up from the deepest sleep he’d enjoyed in a long time to the sound of pounding on the door.

_What the fuck? This isn’t my room…_

His disorientation lasted until he saw Ellie jumping up from the bed beside him and then he remembered the events of the previous night.

“Ellie!” The panic in Olivia’s voice brought Joel to full alert, and that’s when he realized he was hearing something else: an airhorn, but not being blown in any preset pattern, just a series of short, jerky bursts. Something was very wrong.

Ellie made it to the door before he did and wrenched it open. Olivia stumbled in, carrying Lucy clutched to her. “Shut the door!” she gasped.

Lucy was wailing. Ellie, her face whiter than a sheet, slammed the door behind them.

“What the hell is happening?” Joel said.

“I don’t know!” Olivia was still trying to catch her breath. “There are infected in the camp! They’re everywhere! We had a close call, but I managed to get up here from the cabins…”

“Liv…” Joel was staring at her in horror. There was blood on her arm. “You’re bit…”

Olivia gasped and set Lucy down. “Oh my god.” She scrubbed at the blood, but when she wiped it away, her skin was firm and intact. “No, I don’t think so. It must have been…” Her eyes widened in horror.

All three adults looked down at the screaming little girl standing in the middle of the room. She was wearing red Sesame Street pajamas and clutching a stuffed giraffe.

Hectic spots of color bloomed on Ellie’s cheeks, but her voice sounded calm when she knelt in front of Lucy and said, “Sweetie? I’m going to look under your shirt, okay?”

The bite wound was the size of Joel’s palm and was almost black against her pale stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter contains some SCIENCE™! I don't do science, but I read on Wikipedia that an important immunosuppression drug is derived from a strain of the cordyceps fungus, so that's where the idea that the human strain of CBI suppresses the immune system, which would maybe explain why it's so deadly and why the instances of natural immunity are so low.
> 
> What I'm trying to say here is that my SCIENCE™ is really pseudo-science. Any mistaken assumptions, lapses in facts, or misunderstandings of pathology, immunology, mycology, or any other ology are my own. Because I don't science. Please suspend your disbelief and just go with it.
> 
> In case anyone's interested, all of the chapter titles come from the first lines of Sacred Harp hymns.


	5. And Let This Feeble Body Fail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy has been bitten by an infected runner. Although she has inherited Ellie's immunity, she's young enough that the initial infection may kill her anyway. Joel, Ellie, and Olivia must get Lucy back to Roswell for treatment, but that's easier said than done. 
> 
> Warning for suicide triggers.

_Maybe your friends think I'm a stranger_   
_My face you'll never see no more_   
_But there is one promise that is given_   
_I'll meet you on God's golden shore_

\- From _A Man of Constant Sorrow_ , traditional American folk song

* * *

Lucy’s little face was red and distorted from her tears, and all Joel wanted to do was pick her up and comfort her, but the large bite wound on her stomach meant that he couldn’t go near her. Ellie sat back on her heels and looked desperately up at Olivia.

“Liv, what do I do?”

“Oh god...Lucy…” Olivia was looking down in horror, her hand over her mouth.

“Olivia!” Joel shouted.

Olivia jumped and shook herself. “Right. Yes. First get her shirt off. We need to clean the wound right away.”

Lucy took a deep breath and reached out for Olivia. “Mama!” she wailed.

Ellie’s face twisted for just a second, but she rubbed Lucy’s shoulders and said, “Your mama can’t touch you right now, honey. But she’s gonna tell me what to do to help you. It’s only gonna hurt for a little bit, I promise. Let’s get your shirt off, now.” She gently took the stuffed giraffe from Lucy’s hands and set it on the floor, then raised the pajama top up over Lucy’s head.

“Lie down on the floor, baby,” Olivia said. “Auntie Ellie’s going to treat that bite for you.”

“It hurts!” The tears were still streaming down Lucy’s face, but they had slowed somewhat.

Olivia and Joel looked on impotently while Ellie cleaned and bandaged Lucy’s bite wound and cleaned up as much blood as she could. “There,” she said, as she pressed the last piece of tape into place. “You know, you’re going to have a really bitchin’ scar, just like mine.” Ellie pushed her shirt up to show Lucy the ugly bite scar on her arm.

“Gross!” Lucy said, staring at Ellie’s arm in fascination.

“We’ve got to get her out of here before Esteban sees her,” Joel said. He didn’t doubt that Esteban would shoot Lucy as quickly as he’d shot Simon, once he knew she was infected.

“Joel’s right,” Olivia said. “No one knows she’s immune, and they’ll just think I’m lying if I tell them now.”

“Take her back to the cave?” Joel said.

“No.” Ellie shook her head. “You know what it’s like up there. I barely have rudimentary medical supplies. When I got bitten, I got really sick. That’s going to happen to Lucy, too, isn’t it, Liv?”

Olivia nodded reluctantly. “Yes.” She looked like she was going to add something else, but stopped herself.

“How old was the youngest immune survivor you ever saw?” Ellie asked.

Olivia looked at Lucy, who was sitting up and sniffling, once again clutching her stuffed giraffe to her chest. Her eyes were anguished when she said, “Twelve.”

Joel’s heart dropped into his stomach. Were they saying that Lucy wouldn’t survive the infection? “What can we do?”

“Take her to the only place that might possibly help her,” Ellie said, grim determination on her face. “Back to Roswell.”

Olivia gasped. “No! Ellie, they were going to kill you! What do you think they’ll do if you just march in there and deliver yourself to them?”

“It doesn’t _matter_ , Liv,” she said fiercely. “Can you think of any other place within a day’s driving distance of here that we could take her?”

Olivia didn’t answer her.

“I’m not just going to let my daughter die. Not when I can do something—anything—to help her.”

Olivia nodded. “Fine. Then I’m coming with you.”

Ellie stared at her for a long moment. “You know they’ll probably put you up against a firing squad for mutiny or something.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Olivia folded her arms over her chest.

Joel looked down at Lucy. Her thumb was in her mouth, and she was watching the exchange between Ellie and Olivia with huge green eyes.

“I’m comin’, too,” he blurted.

Both women turned to look at him. Ellie shook her head. “Joel…”

“The trip will be less dangerous with three of us, and you know it. You’re gonna have your hands full with Lucy.”

Ellie finally nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Now, what exactly are we drivin’ up there?” he asked.

* * *

Joel whistled low through his teeth. “That’s one hell of an escape plan.” The Humvee was heavily armored, with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the top. “You _stole_ that? From FEDRA? I am impressed.”

Ellie grinned at him. “Misspent youth and all that.”

They were crouched behind a dumpster twenty yards away from the Humvee, which was parked at the top of the road leading into the camp. Joel must have seen the thing a hundred times, but it never moved and he’d assumed it was just a derelict. Turns out it was how Ellie, Lucy, and Olivia had arrived at the Chisos campground, and their donation of the vehicle as a permanent machine gun emplacement had gone a long way toward their acceptance in the community, even with Ellie’s infected status. But they’d run out of 50-cal ammo for the gun over a year ago, so the thing had just been sitting there, mostly useless, ever since.

When they’d told him about the Humvee back in Ellie’s room, Joel had said, “What the hell makes you think that thing will still run? The battery might be dead. The tires might be rotten. There’s probably no diesel in the tank.”

“Casey,” Ellie had replied. “He’s a total gearhead, and he kept it in working condition. He liked to take it down to Terlingua occasionally, for scavenging runs, until Esteban decided it was too dangerous.”

Joel strained to hear any sound of movement between them and the Humvee. There were still sounds of chaos from the camp below, but it sounded like the residents had managed to organize themselves and were starting to rally.

They’d made their way up here by sneaking past the group of infected runners that had been lurching around in front of the lodge. Now they had a big open area to cross and no cover for twenty yards before they got to the Humvee. Joel didn’t see any infected, and he hated to take the chance of being spotted, but he didn’t see any other option.

“Okay, this is the plan. Liv, you take point. Stay low, but move fast. Ellie, you’re carrying Lucy, so you stay between me and Olivia. I’ll bring up the rear.” Joel kept his voice low. He looked at Lucy. “How you holdin’ up, kiddo?”

Her eyes were already glittering with fever, and she shivered, pulling her arms inside the too-big t-shirt she wore, one of Ellie’s spares. “I don’t feel good.”

Ellie hugged her tight. “We’re almost to the truck, sweetheart, and then you can rest.”

Joel turned to both of them. “All right. Everybody ready? Let’s move.”

They moved cautiously out into the open in single-file. Olivia was carrying Joel’s shotgun, loaded and ready, and Joel’s .357 revolver was in his hand. He swiveled around occasionally to walk backwards, making sure they weren’t being tracked by any infected.

When they got to the Humvee, Joel barely had time to register the shadow that rose up from behind the machine gun mount before a heavy body tackled him, striking him a glancing blow on the shoulder with some kind of edged weapon and knocking him to the ground. His gun went flying out of his hand, and then he was grappling with someone, a man from the sound and feel of it, rolling over each other on the dirty asphalt. Joel got in a good cuff on the guy’s ear and when he recoiled in pain, Joel pushed him down and knelt on his chest. His thumbs were pressing down on the man’s windpipe when Olivia’s urgent tone finally cut through the fog of adrenaline that was buzzing in his head.

“Joel, stop it! It’s Casey!”

Joel’s hands released before his brain had time to recognize the face of the man he was choking. Good thing, too; Casey’s eyes were already starting to bulge out. Joel rolled off Casey and sat on the pavement, just starting to notice the sting from the shallow cut on his shoulder. That asshole fucking _cut_ him.

“Goddamn it, Casey,” he grated. “What the fuck do you think you are, a fucking ninja? Why the fuck did you jump me?”

“Hey, fuck you, Joel,” Casey coughed. “What was I supposed to do? You three were acting sneaky as fuck. You wanna tell me what the fuck you’re doing up here, instead of down at the camp, helping fight off fucking infected?” He stood up and offered Joel a hand.

“I could ask you the same question,” Ellie interjected. She was holding Lucy tightly.

“Ow, Auntie Ellie!” Lucy started to cry again. “You’re squeezing my bite!”

Casey’s face went white. “Did that kid just say…”

Olivia pointed the shotgun at Casey. “You’re going to forget you heard that. In fact, you’re going to forget you saw us at all.”

Casey stuck out his jaw. “The fuck I am. You know the rules, Liv…”

“Bill.” Ellie’s voice was quiet, but Joel could tell she was on the edge of losing her calm. “Lucy is my daughter. That means she’s like me. And if you think I’m going to let you harm one hair on her head, you’re seriously fucking mistaken.”

Casey stared at her in silence for a long moment.

Olivia said, “Casey, she’s already getting sick. I need to get her back to Roswell right fucking now. And we need the truck for that.”

Casey’s face was inscrutable. Finally, he said, “I came up here to get the cache of nail bombs I have stored in the back of the truck. You wouldn’t believe how pissed I was when I saw someone had driven her off already.”

Ellie gave a little sigh of relief. “Thank you, Bill.”

Casey gave her one nod, and then turned and jogged back down the hill toward the camp, his machete ready in his hand.

* * *

The trip to Roswell took just under ten hours. Before the outbreak it would have taken six, but they were driving on roads that hadn’t seen a maintenance crew for over six years. The Humvee was built for rough country, but they still had to slow down when the asphalt got too cracked and pitted, or where the road had been washed away completely by flash floods. They also had to stop and siphon more diesel whenever they saw abandoned tractor-trailers and gas stations, just to make sure they had enough fuel on hand for the gas guzzling behemoth.

Fortunately, in addition to Casey’s box of nail bombs, the back of the truck also held thirty gallons of diesel, in six five-gallon jerry cans. It wouldn’t be enough to get them all the way there, not by a long shot, but it was a nice cushion to have, nonetheless.

With Olivia navigating, Joel avoided Fort Stockton and skirted around Pecos, TX. They reached Carlsbad, NM, 75 miles south of Roswell, around seven in the morning. Joel’s eyes felt like they were full of sand; he’d been driving all night. His reflexes weren’t as quick as they normally were, which was why the first runner took him by surprise.

“Joel!” Olivia’s warning came too late; the infected woman crashed into the side of the Humvee and bounced off, flopping like a rag doll in the road behind them.

“Shit!” A group of seven more runners skidded around the corner of a building. The highway ran through the middle of the town here, and he didn’t have much room to maneuver. He gritted his teeth and said, “Everybody hold on.”

“What are you…” Olivia’s question transformed into a scream as he gunned the engine and plowed into the crowd like they were bowling pins.

Fuck, there were more of them in front of him. This was gonna get ugly, fast. _I really wish we had some ammo for that 50-cal._

In the end, even a large group of infected was no match for an armored vehicle with a supercharged diesel V8. There was a moment of meaty, smacking impacts, another moment of sickening crunches and bumps on the road, and then they were through, the remaining infected running after them, but too slow to catch them once they reached the open highway again.

When the last runner had dropped out of sight in his rear-view mirror, and Joel’s heart had stopped hammering, he slowed the Humvee to a crawl. “Everybody all right?” He was shocked by the evenness of his own voice.

“Jesus,” Olivia said.

“Yeah,” Ellie’s voice sounded too strained.

Joel looked back over his shoulder.  “How’s Lucy doin’?”

Ellie shook her head. “She’s too hot. She’s burning up.” Her distress was evident in her voice.

Olivia dug in her pack, and then handed Ellie a plastic bottle of water and a rag. “Here. Wet the rag and swab her skin with it. The evaporation will cool her down a little.”

“How much further, Olivia?” Joel asked.

“The turnoff is south of Roswell, just past Artesia. But after that,” she jerked her thumb back in the direction of Carlsbad, and shuddered, “we might want to skirt around Artesia, just to be safe.”

“You just tell me where to go,” he said.

* * *

About an hour later, Olivia directed him to turn off onto an unmarked dirt road. “You sure about this?” he said.

Olivia’s face was worried, but her mouth quirked in a smile. “You don’t think a secret military base has a bunch of signs telling you where to find it, do you?”

The first sign Joel saw that they were on the right track was a plain white sign that said, in big red letters, “RESTRICTED AREA. NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT.”

“There should be a security post just over this hill…” Olivia stopped when the little building came into view. The barrier across the road was broken, and the building itself was shut up tight. It looked like it had been abandoned for years.

Joel brought the Humvee to a halt just inside the broken security barrier, and left the engine running. “What now?”

Olivia frowned. “I don’t know. They always had guards posted out here. It didn’t look like this when we left.”

Joel said, “I’m gonna check it out. You two stay put.”

Olivia nodded, and for once, Ellie didn’t protest either. He approached the security post cautiously, his pistol loaded and ready, and walked around to the far side where the door. He turned the handle, expecting it to be locked, but it turned easily beneath his hand. He pushed the door to the little building open.

The sudden change in air pressure sent a cloud of earthy dust swirling into Joel’s face, making his eyes water and making him sneeze violently. _Great. Just what I needed, he thought. A faceful of dust…_

And then his eyes fell on what was lying on the floor. It was a rainbow of reds and oranges and yellows, not even recognizable as a human body anymore, except maybe by general shape and the placement of the large, bowl-shaped fruiting body where the head should have been. _An ascocarp,_ he thought remotely. _Somebody told me once, those are called ascocarps._ This ascocarp was puffing spores into the air by the millions, making a faint hissing noise.

Not dust. Not dust at all. And he’d just breathed in more than enough of the things to kill him.

Joel stared at the death sentence on the floor in front of him. He didn’t feel any panic. It had happened too quickly for that. He closed the door with weary resignation and slumped against it, running one hand over his face. He’d been so lucky, up till now. He’d known death would come for him, but when he finally bought it, he’d expected to go violently, torn apart by runners or clickers, or in a gun battle with other humans who wanted to kill him for ammo or food. Hell, he half expected to have been killed in Carlsbad, when he made the run at that big mob of infected. Not this. Not by just breathing. It was such a tiny, stupid mistake.

 _I’m infected. I’m fucking infected._ He felt fine now, but CBI moved fast. How long did he have, a day? Two at the outside. He straightened up and squared his shoulders. He wasn’t going to let himself turn, especially not where he’d endanger his friends. But they needed him right now. _Lucy and Ellie still need my help. I got at least few hours left. I’ll help them as long as I can, and when I feel it start to happen, I’ll take care of it._

When he got back to the truck, he said, “Nobody there.” It was the truth.

* * *

Their footsteps echoed eerily in the empty hallway. There hadn’t been a guard at the entrance to the cluster of buildings proper, and the building security seemed to be offline, the doors unlocked.

“What the hell happened here?” Olivia said.

Ellie, carrying an unconscious Lucy in her arms, said, “Liv, are we going to find what we need here? Can we still save her?”

“I think so. The circuits to the hospital and the labs were all connected to the solar grid, so there should still be power there. As long as they weren’t destroyed or damaged, we should still be able to…” Olivia stopped talking abruptly as she entered the first lab.

Joel looked over her shoulder. The room was trashed. It looked like there’d been a hot gun battle here; shell casings were everywhere and all of the equipment was riddled with bullet holes. Bodies in military uniforms lay on the ground, mummified by the dry air. It was hard to tell, but it looked like they’d been there a few years, at least.

“Joel.” He looked over to where Ellie was pointing. A body in a white lab coat was slumped against a cracked refrigeration unit. There was a large bite on its arm, and its lips were pulled back from its teeth. Lips that were bright cobalt blue, just like the body he’d seen in Alpine.

Joel looked around carefully for blue dust, but he didn’t see any. “Olivia, what do you make of this?” She came over from where she was scavenging for unbroken bottles of medication and knelt down to inspect the body.

She looked up at Ellie in surprise, brandishing the man’s badge. “Ellie, it’s Dr. Singleton!”

“Holy shit,” Joel said. “The guy who ran everything here?”

“He was bitten,” Ellie said.

“Yeah,” said Joel, “but nobody else here was. They were all gunned down. And what’s with the blue lips on the good doctor? None of the other corpses have them, and there’s no blue dust around, but it looks just like what I saw in Alpine.”

Olivia spread her hands. “I have no idea what happened here.”

Ellie said, “I bet we can find out if we search Singleton’s office. It’s…” Lucy moaned, and Ellie looked down at her, putting her hand on Lucy’s flushed forehead. “Shit. She’s really burning up. Liv, you find anything useful in here?”

Olivia shook her head. “No. What I need is more likely to be in the hospital wing anyway.”

“Let’s hope it’s in better shape than this lab,” Joel said. “C’mon, let’s move.” _I don’t have much time left._ He breathed deep, testing his lungs, but so far the fungal intrusion hadn’t caused any physical symptoms.

He led the way through the next set of doors, his pistol ready, and followed the signs down the empty hallway to the hospital. Fortunately, it looked like the firefights hadn’t gotten this far, and while dusty, the hospital rooms were relatively undisturbed.

“Lay her down on one of the beds.” Olivia pointed, and Ellie carefully set Lucy down on the least dusty bed, cradling her head as it came down on the pillow.

“Mama.” Lucy’s eyes fluttered open, her voice tiny and pitiful. “Mama.”

Ellie smoothed Lucy’s hair back and kissed her forehead. “Shhh, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m here.”

Olivia wheeled an IV stand over to the bed and hung a bag of saline from it. “She’s dehydrated. We need to get some fluids into her.” She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up an IV needle.

Ellie said, “Can’t I do that? It would be safer…”

“No,” Olivia said firmly. “I don’t have time to teach you. You’d just end up hurting her. I promise I’ll be careful.” She looked down at Lucy. “Okay, sweetie, this is going to sting a little.” She wrapped a tourniquet around Lucy’s arm, and then expertly slipped the needle into a vein on the back of Lucy’s hand. When the catheter was inserted, she pulled the needle back out and dropped it into a plastic sharps container. “See? Careful.” She taped the catheter down to Lucy’s hand, and then attached the IV tubing.

As Olivia started the IV, Joel said, “What can I do?”

Ellie, holding Lucy’s hand, looked up at him in mute distress.

Olivia tossed Dr. Singleton’s badge at Joel and said, “I need Ellie’s help with Lucy, but why don’t you check Singleton’s office and see if you can find any clues about what happened here. It’s just at the end of the hall.”

Joel went reluctantly. Knowing that his remaining life could be measured in hours, not days, he wanted to spend as much of it as possible in the same room as Ellie. He’d ransack the office as quickly as he could and get right back.

He had to use Dr. Singleton’s badge to open the locked office door, but the small room wasn’t exactly a treasure trove of useful information. The desk was clean, other than a layer of dust, and the file cabinets were locked. It looked like the good doctor had just shut up shop one night with every intention of coming back. Well, that told him one thing: whatever had happened here had been a surprise to the administration. The desk drawer held the usual office supplies, paper clips and pens and staplers, a letter opener, a notepad, and a couple of voice recorders; Joel pocketed the recorders for Olivia, and then took the letter opener over to the filing cabinet. He jimmied the lock with a few judicious movements and pulled out the drawer.

“Patient files,” Joel muttered as he thumbed through the neatly organized and labeled folders. The second drawer was full of more patient files, some an inch or more thick, others just a few sheets of paper. At the back of the drawer was Ellie’s file, one of the thick ones, and there was Lucy’s file right behind it. Joel hesitated a moment before pulling them out. What the hell. Olivia might want them. He set the folders on Dr. Singleton’s desk, and opened the third file drawer.

It was empty except for a laptop with a power cord. “Bingo. Maybe Olivia can find something useful on this.”

He pulled the computer out and set it on top of Ellie and Lucy’s files. He took another deep breath, but his chest felt normal. He still had some time, then. He gathered his spoils and headed back down the hallway.

* * *

When he got back to Lucy’s hospital room he could see that she was sleeping again, her tiny head surrounded by a frizzy halo of gold curls. Jesus, she looked so small lying there in that bed, all hooked up to the IV stand.

“How’s she doin’?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Ellie stood up and stretched. “Better. Liv found some baby aspirin, and the fever is coming down. All we can do now is keep pushing fluids into her and hope she can fight off the infection.”

Joel put his arm around Ellie, and it was a measure of her distress that she leaned into him instead of pushing him away. He kissed the top of her head and said, “She’s gonna be okay. She’s a fighter, just like her mom.”

Ellie gave him a watery smile. “Thanks. To be honest, I’ve never been more scared in my life.”

He gave her shoulder one last squeeze and let her go. It hurt, knowing it was one of the last times he would touch her, but he kept his voice calm. “I know.” He turned to Olivia, who was sitting on the other side of Lucy’s bed and held up his loot. “Might be some answers on these things.”

Olivia’s eyes lit up. “Hey, good work! Let’s take a look.” She took the laptop and the two voice recorders. The first voice recorder was a disappointment; the batteries were long dead. They’d have to dig some new ones up if they wanted to listen to anything on it. But the batteries were working on the second recorder.

Olivia pressed the play button.

_“Dr. Brenham left us yesterday, and took the Williams girl and her daughter with her. I’ve called off the search. They stole a Humvee; at this point they could be anywhere.”_

She pressed pause, looked up at Joel and said, “Dr. Singleton.” She forwarded the recorder to the next entry.

_“There’s been another development. The patients were suspicious of our cover story about Dr. Brenham. Javier Orosco managed to break into my office. He saw my files on the antemortem tissue studies.” There was a long pause. “He found out that Maya was one of the subjects. He...he was upset. I…”_

Olivia pressed the forward button again.

_“Javier has been telling the other patients that we’ve been removing the brains of otherwise healthy infected. It’s not...This is why we were keeping it secret in the first place! We’ve placed him and a few of his friends in lockdown until further notice.”_

She held down the forward button. Dr. Singleton’s voice sped by in a high-pitched squeal.

 _“...broke into the armory last night. Colonel Esposito tells me enough weapons are missing to arm the entire ward. They bit private Willis. They bit him! I can’t believe it’s come to t_ his.”

“Jesus,” Olivia muttered. She forwarded the recorder to the next entry.

_“Javier came to see me this morning. He had a whole list of demands, but chief among them was for the immune to be granted the freedom to come and go from the facility as they pleased, and for us to stop all experimentation involving the removal of living brain tissue. It’s insane! They have no idea how close we are with our research, or how dangerous it is out there. They don’t understand we’re protecting them here, and trying to protect all humanity!”_

“What research is he talking about, Liv?” Ellie asked.

Olivia shook her head. “I don’t know. They were nowhere near formulating a cure or a vaccine by the time we left, and this seems to have happened pretty soon after that.” She forwarded to the next entry.

_“They’ve taken over the entire facility past the cafeteria, and they’ve taken fifteen hostages. So they’ve got me over a barrel, here. But I’ve got them over a barrel too. They can’t get out, and they’ll run out of food eventually. I’ve called a meeting with them for tomorrow morning. I’ve decided to tell them what they want to hear, while Colonel Esposito and his men will infiltrate the patient quarters from the rear through the blast doors. With the meeting, our bet is those doors will be only lightly guarded.”_

“That’s the last file on the recorder,” Olivia said.

“Guess that meeting didn’t exactly go as planned,” Joel said.

“Liv,” Ellie said, horror in her voice, “do you think one of us—I mean, one of the immune—bit Dr. Singleton?”

Olivia shrugged helplessly. “There’s no telling, Ellie. If they were deliberately infecting the guards or the support staff, it could have been any of the infected. I hope not.”

“Shit.” Ellie shuddered. “Now I’m really glad we got out of here when we did.”

“Still doesn’t explain the blue lips, or why Singleton didn’t turn after he was bitten, though,” Joel said. He coughed. Shit. Now his chest was starting to ache, which was probably a sign that his own infection was starting to take hold.

Olivia plugged in the laptop. “Maybe we’ll find something on this.”

As casually as he could manage, Joel said, “Hey, before you get started with that, would you mind takin’ a look at my shoulder? I don’t think Casey’s machete was all too clean.”

“Oh, sure.” Olivia stood up. “Of course.”

“It’ll probably be easier if I’m sittin’ down. Why don’t we use the next room over? Don’t want to disturb Lucy.”

“Yeah, all right. Ellie, you mind holding down the fort here while I check Joel over?”

Ellie waved them off. “Course not. Sorry I’m missing the strip show, though.”

Joel grinned at her, a pang of happiness spearing straight through him. “I’ll see what I can do about a private performance later,” he said.

Ellie’s smile lit up her face, and the tension around her eyes eased. “Don’t tempt me. Go on, get out of here.” She was still smiling and shaking her head over Lucy’s bed when Joel closed the door to the adjoining room.

“God, you’re good for her,” Olivia said. “I wish you two…”

“Olivia,” Joel interrupted her. “I need you to test me for CBI. I think I was exposed.”

“What?” Olivia’s face was blank with shock. “When?”

“Back at the guard station. It was full of spores. Now, my chest is startin’ to hurt, so there ain’t much question in my mind, but I’d like an official diagnosis before I go take care of myself.”

“I…” Olivia shook her head, unable to finish her sentence. Silently, she went through the motions of getting the tester out of the drawer, checking the batteries, and loading a fresh lancet. She pressed it behind Joel’s right ear, and he felt a tiny prick.

 _Maybe I’m wrong,_ he thought. _Maybe I didn’t breathe in enough spores to get infected. Maybe…_

The tester clicked to indicate that it was done processing.

He didn’t need to see the screen. The look on Olivia’s face, gray with horror, told him plenty.

Joel nodded. “That’s what I thought. I just needed to know. I’m gonna go…” He stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to even say it. “You won’t have to worry about me,” he said finally.

“Joel, I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t tell Ellie. I don’t want her to feel like she’s responsible for me.”

“But...don’t you want to say goodbye?” Olivia was fighting back tears.

He shook his head. “I’d rather leave her with a smile on her face. God knows she deserves it. Just...just tell her I went lookin’ for more batteries.”

“You know she’ll go looking for you when you don’t come back, no matter what I say, right?”

Joel’s smile was strangely soft. “I know. You can tell her then, if you have to. Just don’t let her come after me. I don’t want her to see me.”

* * *

Olivia passed a tired hand over her eyes. Lucy was stable, but they could still lose her. She hadn’t told Ellie that yet, didn’t want to worry her too much. And now Joel…how the hell was she going to tell Ellie about that?

She needed to keep her mind busy, before she lost it completely.

She cracked open the laptop that Joel had brought her and hit the power button, giving a satisfied nod when the thing booted right up.

To a password screen. Shit. She stared into space for a few moments, trying to remember any details about George Singleton, a man she’d respected for his intellect but never really liked. She sighed. There wasn’t much to remember. George had been a quiet man, and not overly generous with details about his personal life before the outbreak. The only thing that stuck out was that damn cat he was always moaning about...what was its name? Something like...Goliath, or...no, Gilgamesh! Olivia remembered thinking to herself that people who gave their pets outrageous names of mythical figures were maybe anthropomorphizing a little too much.

She typed “gilgamesh” into the password field and hit the Enter key, crossing her fingers.

There was a tense ten seconds while the computer worked to authenticate the password, and Olivia was afraid she’d have to just start guessing random words when the hard drive whirred and the operating system started to load on the screen.

She breathed a sigh of relief, and then said, “Thank you, George, for having such shitty security on your laptop.” She clicked open a file browser and thanked George again; he may have been a prick, but he was an organized prick. She scanned the list of folders. Most were self-explanatory: a folder titled “Patient Records” held subfolders with names of the immune survivors. Another, titled “Genetic Profiles,” were George’s notes on the best genetic matches for the breeding program. “Antemortem Study” also held subfolders with familiar names; infected patients and infected immune alike, people who’d either turned or outlived their usefulness to George’s breeding program. Olivia’s mouth hardened. Ellie’s name would be there too, if she hadn’t escaped when she did.

A folder titled “Project Blue” caught her eye. _What’s this, George?_ It wasn’t familiar, but the folder was dated several years before she’d left the facility. She thought she’d known about all of the research projects going on here. She clicked on the folder, only to get a password prompt.

 _Huh, that’s weird._ None of the other files, not even the sensitive patient files, had been password-protected. She sat back and chewed her lip, then shrugged. _What the hell._ She typed “gilgamesh” into the password field again.

The folder opened. “You’ve got to be kidding me, George” she said under her breath. “That’s almost as bad as just using ‘password’ for your password.”

She selected the first file, titled AlpineTX_FAILURE, opened it, and started to read.

“Oh, my god.”

Ellie looked up from Lucy’s bedside. “What is it, Liv?”

Two minutes later, Ellie was running down the hallway. She needed to find Joel and stop him. She only hoped she wasn’t too late already.

* * *

Joel had slipped through a partially blocked door into a large cafeteria. Apparently this part of the building wasn’t powered by the solar cells, because it was pitch black, and quiet as a tomb. Which was appropriate, now that he thought about it. He didn’t see signs of any infected, but the overturned tables, bodies, bullet holes, and shell casings revealed by the beam of his flashlight told him that this was where the major skirmish of Javier’s revolution went down. Joel padded cautiously through the old carnage, but only dust stirred at his passage.

He spent the next quarter hour or so getting himself lost in the warren of hallways beyond the cafeteria, looking for a decent place to do himself in. The place was like a maze. The doors on this corridor were labeled with people’s names; the rooms appeared to be living quarters for the immune survivors. They locked from the outside, not the inside.

 _Christ, these people were basically prisoners here, havin’ all manner of medical experiment run on them. No wonder they wanted to make a break for it,_ he thought.

He stopped in front of a door that read, _Williams, E.S._ and _Williams, L.A._ Ellie and Lucy’s room. _I guess Javier’s little revolution happened so soon after Ellie left that they never even took her name off the door._

Joel cracked open the door and let himself into the room. It was tiny, barely big enough for the twin bed, dresser, and crib that was squeezed into it. A door on the right side led to a small bathroom with a cubicle shower.

Joel sat down on the low bed. The quilt was nice, if dusty, and it looked homemade. _Maybe it was a family piece that she brought from home,_ he thought. Granny Miller used to have a huge cedar chest full of quilts, some she’d inherited from her mother, and some she’d made herself. When she’d died, Joel’s father had sold the quilts and the chest to an antique store.

He was sitting on something lumpy. He lifted up the quilt and found an old, floppy stuffed beaver. Sarah had owned a large stuffed animal collection, but her favorite, a little stuffed rabbit, had looked a lot like this; it was missing most of its fur and one eye, and the stuffing had long ago repositioned itself into the doll’s extremities, making its overly bulbous legs and tail dangle from its body. It was well-loved, something a little girl had slept with and cherished for most of her life.

He coughed again, feeling a tearing pain in his chest. Damn it, he probably didn’t have much time left. At least his head was still clear.

Sitting up, he gently set the stuffed beaver on the pillow. He’d originally thought that this would be an ideal place, surrounded by things Ellie had touched and loved, but he knew that he didn’t want her to find him that way, dead among her childhood treasures.

He went back out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him, then chose another patient's room at random. Jones, S.T.

S.T. Jones had been a man, by the look of the room. There was an assortment of men’s clothing in the dresser, and a University of Texas Longhorns poster on the wall. Joel smiled faintly. A man after his own heart. Yeah, this room would do.

He took his backpack off and leaned it against the foot of the bed. _Shoulda just left this and my other guns with Olivia,_ he thought. T _here’s stuff in there they could probably use. He dug in the front pocket. Where did that thing go? I know I had one left...Ah._ His fingers closed on the one hollowpoint round he still had left. The frangible bullets were better than gold when it came to trading, and just one could drop a clicker in its tracks. This one would be more than enough to make sure he finished the job with one shot.

He pulled his revolver out of the holster on his hip, and cracked open the cylinder, then loaded the hollowpoint bullet and advanced it to the first firing position.

He took a deep breath. _I should have said goodbye to Ellie._

The barrel of the pistol was cold against his temple, and the trigger was heavy beneath his index finger. It was a double-action .357 revolver. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

Another tearing cough racked his body.

* * *

Ellie ran down corridor after corridor, growing more and more panicked with every step. She had lost track of Joel’s footprints, and now she was just picking hallways at random, hoping she’d come across him before she heard the gunshot that ended his life. “Joel!” she shouted. “JOEL!”

She was running down one of the hallways that ran through the living quarters for the immune survivors—her old corridor, she realized, hallway B6—when she heard the shot.

She was too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote the final chapter of the story before I wrote this penultimate one. It's still undergoing some editing, but I promise to post it on Wednesday. So hopefully the fact that you won't have to wait long for the resolution will help you forgive me for leaving you with this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cliffhanger of an ending.
> 
> I took a cue from my friend and fellow author, R_W_Daniels, and gave Ellie the middle name Suzanne (Ashley Johnson's middle name). Lucy's middle name is Anna, after Ellie's mother. (By the way, "took a cue from" is a nice way of saying "stole shamelessly." Forgive me, R_W?)
> 
> Ellie's stuffed beaver is a relic from my own childhood, one of my first stuffed animals. She was named "Beavey." (I was not super creative when it came to naming my stuffed animals.) I lost Beavey in a house fire a few years back, and I thought this would be a nice way to memorialize her. RIP, Beavey. 
> 
> (The fact that the doll is a _beaver_ is insignificant. Really. Get your mind out of the gutter. Heh. I said beaver.)


	6. Now Shall My Inward Joys Arise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhangers are resolved, mysteries are answered, science is done, and kissing happens at long last.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound_   
_That saved a wretch like me_   
_I once was lost, but now am found_   
_Was blind, but now I see._

\- From _Amazing Grace_ , traditional American hymn

* * *

Ellie froze in her tracks as the shot echoed through the empty corridor. The flash from the gun had come from two doors down, Seth Jones’s old room, a mere fifteen feet away.

No. NO! This wasn’t happening. This was a nightmare, and she’d wake up any second. She smelled the gunpowder, acrid in the dusty hallway.

“Oh, god…” A sob rose in her throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth to hold it in. This was no dream. She was too late. She’d lost so many people, her parents, her two unborn children, all her friends, maybe Lucy, and now Joel, who she...she had strong feelings for, despite herself. Suddenly, her knees didn’t feel like they’d hold her up anymore. She slumped against the corridor wall and slid to the floor, letting the tears come. If only Olivia had read that damn file faster. If only she’d fucking _run_ faster...

Something nudged her toe. Ellie raised her tear-streaked face to find Joel standing over her, frowning.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She scrambled to her feet. “Joel! Oh, thank god…”

She went to throw her arms around him, but he pushed her back almost angrily. “Damn it, Ellie! Don’t make this harder on me.”

She was so shaken, she could barely form a coherent sentence. “I heard the shot, and I thought you…” She took a deep breath. “What happened?”

Joel grimaced. “A clicker. It was hiding in the bathroom. Woke up when I started coughing, I guess.” He looked her over. “Christ, Ellie! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You ain’t even carryin' a weapon. We don’t know if there are more infected down here.” He smiled bitterly. “Besides the two of us, I mean.”

“No, that’s what I wanted…” She cut herself off and they both stiffened as the all-too-familiar sound of a clicker searching for prey echoed down the corridor.

“Damn it,” Joel muttered. “We better move.” He handed her his pistol. “Only three more rounds in there, so you best make ‘em count.”

“Follow me,” Ellie said. A combination of relief, happiness, fear, and something else, something that made her heart pound at the sight of him, was making her feel lightheaded. “And stay quiet.” She almost grinned.

* * *

Joel followed Ellie’s lead, but her admonishment to stay quiet was easier said than done. The clicker had their trail, and every time it seemed like they were going to lose it, the insistent ache in Joel’s chest would turn into a painful cough that he couldn’t suppress. And the clicker would start to zero in on them again.

The third time it happened, Ellie looked back at him in alarm. Tears were streaming down his face and his chest was hitching with the effort to hold the cough in. All he could do was shake his head at her.

He wanted to tell her, _You might as well leave me. I can buy you the time you need to get out,_ but he couldn’t catch his breath to whisper. Instead, he pointed at himself, and then pointed back toward the clicker.

Ellie shook her head, her eyes urgent. “I need to talk to you,” she whispered.

The clicker was about twenty feet away, and heading right toward them. With a start, Joel realized that she’d navigated them all the way back to the cafeteria, and the door to the labs and the hospital wing where Olivia and Lucy waited was just on the other side of the room.

Ellie’s hand snaked past him to pick up an empty bottle. She threw it behind the clicker to distract it. When the bottle smashed against the wall, the clicker turned around and shrieked, then went to investigate the noise. “Come on!” She motioned Joel forward, and together they crossed the wide expanse of room in a fast crouch, moving as quietly as they could.

They were still ten feet from the door when another cough came ripping out of Joel’s throat.

“Goddamn it! Ellie, run!” The clicker zeroed in on them again and came at them at a lurching run, snapping its crooked teeth. Joel shoved Ellie through the doorway and then slammed the door shut behind her. He leaned his back against the door and yelled, “Block it! Block the fucking door, Ellie! I don’t want these things anywhere near you and Lucy!”

He could feel the vibrations as Ellie beat on the door with her fist. “No! Joel! JOEL! WE THINK YOU’RE IMMUNE!”

The clicker was fifteen feet away and closing fast. Joel pulled his shotgun out of its holster and waited until the monster was almost on top of him before he unloaded his last shell into the thing’s head.

A series of shrieks from the darkened corridors beyond the cafeteria told Joel that more infected were on the way. He pulled open the cafeteria door and slipped into the lit hallway, where Ellie helped him push a vending machine in front of the doors and jam the door handles shut with the legs of a chair for good measure.

Then, as calmly as possible, not sure he’d heard her correctly, Joel turned to Ellie and said, “I’m what, now?”

* * *

“Project Blue. Blue Cordyceps. A genetically modified version of CBI, intended to vaccinate the non-immune. It also had the side benefit of being deadly to anyone already infected with CBI, basically a chemical weapon against the infected. George had a team of research scientists working on it all along, but it was top secret. Nobody knew what those guys were really doing.”

“It’s a vaccine?” Joel repeated.

“Yes.” Olivia said. “I mean, kind of. They never had a prototype that worked outside the lab, in human subjects. They tested it out in Alpine, with some kind of aerosolized delivery mechanism—that was the fastest way to immunize a large number of people, they figured—but you’ve seen how that turned out.”

“Yeah. A bunch of dead people.” Joel shook his head. “I don’t think I like Dr. Singleton very much.”

“He was pretty much an asshole, but he got hit with a fuckton of karma. It looks like he injected himself with Blue Cordyceps after he was bitten, but the CBI had already progressed too far.” Ellie said. “That’s how he ended up all smurfed.” She’d grabbed his hand as soon as they’d gotten back to Lucy’s room, and she still hadn’t let go of it. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation at all.

“So, if this vaccine never actually worked, then what makes you think I’m suddenly immune?” Joel’s chest still ached, and he was starting to shudder with chills from a fever. “I’m still gettin' sick. You shoulda let me finish the job.”

Ellie’s hand tightened around his.

Olivia was smiling. “Yes, but this isn’t the normal progression of symptoms for CBI. Even when it’s inhaled, the pathogen takes over the limbic system first, so you lose the ability to control your behavior, make decisions, and your memories. What you don’t get,” she said happily, “is a fever. A fever means your immune system is fighting off the infection. And this blood test confirms it.” She held up a slip of paper that one of the lab machines had spit out. “You have antibodies for CBI. And you could only have those from a previous infection, which we know is impossible, or from a successful vaccination. Which, apparently, you were exposed to in Alpine.”

“Blue Loco is a fucking _vaccine_?” Joel’s head was starting to ache. “One that _works_?”

Olivia’s grin faded. “Well, it’s working so far. CBI is a very aggressive pathogen, so you’re still getting sick. But the vaccine gives your body a fighting chance at fighting it off, just like if you had a natural immunity like Ellie. It’ll be a while before we know if it’s a hundred percent effective or not. You, ah, might get sicker before you get better.”

“You’re saying I still might turn,” he said.

Olivia nodded reluctantly. “You might. Or your body’s fight with the infection might kill you. Or you might fight it off. It’s not an exact science. We have some isolation rooms on this ward where we kept patients who’d been at risk of infection during our contagion study...all things considered, it might be best to keep you there, just for a week or so.”

Joel considered for a moment. “All right. Two conditions, though. You,” he pointed at Olivia, “don’t come in that room with me. Even if I pull through, we don’t know if or how I might be able to infect you.” He looked at Ellie, and raised her hand to his lips for a quick kiss. “That leaves you to do all the dirty work, darlin’, and for that I’m truly sorry. But you swear to me you never enter that room without a gun in your hand. And if I do turn, you shoot to kill.”

“I swear.” Her face was solemn, but her eyes burned with the same cautious excitement he was starting to feel in his chest. If he was immune, that meant he and Ellie could...no. Better not even think about that until they knew for sure. Don’t get anyone’s hopes up.

He looked over to where Lucy was still sleeping in her hospital bed, completely missing out on all the excitement. She had a little more color in her face. “I don’t make it through this, you give that girl a kiss for me.”

“You can kiss Lucy yourself when you come out,” she said fiercely. “Me, you can kiss now.” She fisted her hand in the collar of his shirt and pulled his head down to hers.

When her lips touched his, his breath caught in his throat, and when he felt the tip of her tongue licking his lower lip all the blood in Joel’s body rushed south. He tilted his head and slanted his mouth against hers hungrily, devouring her tongue with his. He couldn’t tell if he was shaking from the kiss or the fever. If this wasn’t something worth fighting for, he didn’t know what was.

“Jesus. Get a room, you two,” he heard Olivia mutter.

He started to pull back, but Ellie’s hand on the back of his head prevented it. She was exploring his mouth with long, slow movements of her tongue, and she didn’t stop until his breath was coming in short, painful gasps and his heart was pounding like a hammer in his chest.

When she finally drew back with a smile that could only be described as smug, Joel said, “Fuck.” It was the only semi-coherent thought in his head.

She shrugged modestly. “I’m a little out of practice.”

Joel’s head was splitting, and he was starting to shiver uncontrollably, but he laughed. It turned into another tearing cough that doubled him over. Goddamn it, his fucking ribs were starting to hurt. He flashed Ellie one last, weak smile, and then said, “All right doc. You better get me locked up, because I’m really startin’ to feel like shit.”

* * *

Cold. So cold. His teeth were chattering, and the sheets were wet. Why were the sheets wet? He was so fucking cold.

The hand on his brow seared his skin, and he cried out.

A familiar voice. “Shh. It’s okay.”

“S-s-s-sarah? Baby g-g-girl?” That wasn’t right. He should be taking care of her, not the other way around. He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t seem to get his arm underneath himself to push himself up.

“No, don’t. You’ll hurt yourself,” she said.

“I’m cold.” Chills wracked his body. “Baby, I’m s-s-s-sorry. Not takin’ care of you.”

“It’s okay. I’m here.” He felt the weight of another blanket being added.

“I shoulda…” He felt warmer, and as the chills subsided, he drifted back into sleep.

* * *

He woke himself with coughing. Every muscle, every joint in his body ached, and each cough felt like his lungs were being stabbed with a rusty knife. He moaned as another chill shook him.

A cool hand on the back of his neck raised his head from the pillow. “Here, drink this.”

“I’m tired.” He was seven, and he had pneumonia. That’s why his chest hurt so much. He was staying with Granny Miller so Tommy didn’t get sick too.

“Stay with me, now. Sing me a song.”

Joel tried to sing one of the Sacred Harp hymns she’d taught him, but he could only remember fragments. He realized that it hurt less if he didn’t breathe.

And then Granny Miller’s hand was thumping the rhythm on his chest, but she was pounding hard, and she didn’t stop until he breathed in again. “It hurts,” he muttered. Tears leaked from under his eyelids and he tried to stop them, didn’t want his father to see.

“I know. Stay with me, though. Drink this.”

He swallowed from the cup she held to his lips, the thick liquid soothing and warm. When he was done, her hands rubbed menthol on his chest, which made it hurt a little less to breathe.

He fell back into the darkness of his fevered sleep.

* * *

A woman was humming “Amazing Grace,” low and under her breath. It was accompanied by a faint clicking noise. Not like a clicker, nothing like that; it was a faint, homey sound that he thought he should recognize but couldn’t quite place. With a tremendous effort, Joel cracked open his eyes and turned his head toward the sound.

Olivia was sitting in the padded chair next to his bed, humming softly to herself and knitting. The metal needles flashed through the brightly colored yarn, clicking against each other in a soothing rhythm.

“Liv.” His voice came out as a croak.

The needles stopped. “Joel! Welcome back.” Her smile warmed her brown eyes as she stabbed the needles down into the ball of yarn and put the knitting down on the bed.

He tried to say, _You’re not supposed to be in here with me. You don’t want to get infected. Where’s Ellie?_ But all that came out was, “...‘s Ellie?” He tried to raise his hand, but there was something holding it down. When he opened his mouth to ask why, Olivia popped a thermometer under his tongue.

He was in one of those adjustable beds, he saw, and it was raised up so he was in a mostly sitting position. Looking down, he saw that his wrists were strapped down to the sides of the bed with padded leather restraints.

“Ellie’s sleeping. Between you and Lucy, she’s barely slept in a week, and she needed some rest. Doctor’s orders.” She bent over him and started to unbuckle the restraints. “Sorry about the wrist cuffs. We had to put you on IV fluids, and you kept trying to pull the tubing out.”

“Week?” He said around the thermometer in his mouth.

Olivia frowned at him. “Don’t talk while I’m trying to take your temperature. Yes, it was touch-and-go for a while there, but it looks like you’re going to pull through.”

Joel’s brows knit. “Lucy?” he whispered around the thermometer.

“She’s going to be all right. It’s a good thing you’re both so stubborn.” She pulled the thermometer out of his mouth and read it with a satisfied smile. “Back to normal. Are you hungry?”

At the question, Joel’s stomach cramped painfully. He wasn’t just hungry, he was ravenous. “Yeah.”

“I had Ellie start you on a sugar solution when we realized you weren’t going to be able to keep anything down. Let me go get something you’ll be able to stomach.” She left, and Joel closed his eyes again. The effort of keeping them open was making him too tired.

He couldn’t tell how long it had been when he heard the door open again. Ten minutes? An hour? He laboriously cracked his eyelids open. This time, it was Ellie, not Olivia, settling into the chair next to his bed.

Her hair was lank and unwashed, and there were dark hollows under her eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a year. He’d never seen a more welcome sight in his entire life.

“You look like hell.” His voice grated in his throat, but he managed a faint smile

She gave a little laugh as she set the tray she’d been carrying down on the bedside table. It was music to his ears. “Me? You look…” Her smile faded, and she took one of his hands in hers. “You look worse than that day you almost died in my stream.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Not this time.” He laughed, but it turned into a weak cough. His muscles screamed at him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk yet,” she said. “Here, I brought you some chicken broth.” She held up a pink plastic cup with a straw in front of his face.

Joel leaned forward and grasped the straw with his lips. Even with his stomach growling insistently at him, he could only manage one small sip at a time. He let his head fall back onto his pillow before he was even halfway through, too tired to drink any more.

“Enough for now?” she asked.

He nodded, closing his eyes again. Fuck, he was tired.”You should get some rest.”

She took his hand in her again, and the last thing he heard her say before he slipped into a deep sleep was, “I’m not going anywhere.”

It made him smile.

* * *

He was alone in the room the next time he woke up, and his bladder felt like it was about to burst. He could see a bathroom on the other side of the room, so he dragged his legs to the side of the bed with the IV stand, and then stood up, using the metal stand for balance.

 _Christ, I’m wobbly as a newborn calf,_ he thought. But he was up. He pointed himself toward the bathroom and took a few exploratory steps. Wobbly or no, his legs were holding him up. He was out of breath and sweating by the time he was halfway across the room, but the pressure in his bladder drove him forward. He was _not_ going to piss himself here in the middle of the room.

By a herculean effort, he made his tottering way into the bathroom, where he leaned his forehead against the wall over the toilet, utterly winded. He was glad the toilet seat was already up, because he didn’t think he had the energy to bend over and lift it.

He was wearing a hospital gown, one that tied in front like a robe. He plucked at the closure with increasing frustration. Actually standing over the toilet was just making his urge to go even stronger, and if he didn’t get this fucking robe open soon he was gonna...ah, there it was. The robe fell open. He took hold of himself with one hand and aimed.

“Ahhhh…” Joel sighed in relief as the stream of liquid hissed into the toilet bowl. He felt like he hadn’t peed in a fucking decade.

He was still relieving himself when the outer door opened and Ellie walked into the room.

“Hey!” he said weakly. “Peeing here.”

“Joel, what the fuck are you doing out of bed?” She sounded mad.

“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” he muttered. He finished and straightened up, holding on to the IV stand for balance. He didn’t think he could close the robe back up again. “Uh, I’m a little naked, here.”

She smirked. “Yeah, I know. How do you think you got that way?”

Joel’s cheeks flushed, and she laughed. “Did I just make you blush?”

He shook his head. “Must be the fever comin’ back.”

“Don’t even joke about that.” She took in his trembling legs. “You need some help getting back to bed?”

Joel turned toward her, nakedness be damned, and gritted his teeth. “No.” He took three shaking steps before he stumbled and caught himself on the wall. He barely kept his fingers hooked around the IV stand.

“God, you’re a stubborn fuck.” She went to him, and said, “Put your arm around me, you idiot, before you end up on the floor.”  

He leaned on her more than he wanted to, but together they got him back to the bed. He sighed gratefully when he finally sat down. Ellie reached down and retied the flimsy cotton gown around his waist, but at the touch of her hand on his bare chest, certain parts of his anatomy over which he had no control decided to sit up and pay attention. Maybe she wouldn’t notice…

“Well, hello to you, too,” she said, a sly grin on her face.

Joel wished the floor would open up and swallow him. His face felt like it was on fire. “Uh…”

Her laugh lit up her face. And then she leaned down and kissed him, and Joel forgot to be embarrassed. Her lips were soft and wet against his cracked, dry mouth, and kissing her felt better than that first drink of water did when he was dying of dehydration.

He felt her mouth open against his, and the tip of her tongue drew a slick trail across his upper lip. He touched his tongue to hers, and then she slid into his mouth, her tongue stroking his with languid movements until they were both breathing heavily through their noses.

He broke the kiss to come up for breath and said, with an air of wonder, “Goddamn, woman. Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?”

“Charlotte Prince.” The smile she gave him made his head spin. It was archly suggestive, but delivered through demurely lowered lashes in a way that made him want to growl.

He was so turned on by her heated glance that he didn’t process what she’d said for a moment. “Wait, what? Charlotte?”

Her smile widened. “My first girlfriend,” she said. “We spent the basically the entire summer we turned sixteen making out. Naked.”

“Urgh.” It was the most intelligent sound Joel could make. His face was flaming again, and the tent between his legs was standing to full and painful attention. He hadn’t been raised in a particularly liberal household, and this was totally outside the realm of his experience. He tried again. “You’re…”

Ellie straightened up and cocked her head to one side. “You’re only the second man I’ve kissed.”

Joel felt like the top of his head had opened up and his brains were leaking out. “Who was the first?”

She made a face and shuddered. “Eddie Falcone. Tongue like an ice cube. Very handsy. He never got past second base.” She leaned back down to kiss him again, saying, “You’re doing a hell of a lot better than Eddie.”

Joel’s heart hammered in his ears as her tongue swirled around his, and when she nibbled on his lower lip he couldn’t suppress a moan in the back of his throat. Holy fuck, the things she was doing with her tongue, it was making him seriously question whether he’d ever really been kissed before. Something she’d said nagged at the back of his mind, though, and he tried very hard to put together a coherent sentence.

“Ellie, what about…what about Lucy?”

She straightened up again, her face flushed and her eyes hazy with desire, a confused look on her face. “What about her?”

“If I’m only the second man you’ve kissed, and Eddie Falcone never made it past second base, how does Lucy...you know, _exist_?”

Ellie laughed. “Well, Joel, when a daddy sperm loves a mommy egg very, very much, sometimes they get combined in a laboratory and make a zygote. And then that zygote gets implanted in the mommy’s uterus…”

He flushed. “Okay, okay, I get it. I don’t need illustrations.”

She grinned. “I never had you figured for such a prude, Joel.”

“I ain’t a prude,” he bristled. “This is just...wait a minute. Does that mean you’re a virgin?”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “For a very, very narrow definition of virgin, yes, I guess I am. But I have also had a lot of creative sex with a fair number of gorgeous ladies, in addition to pushing an eight-pound baby out through my vagina, so I’m gonna have to come down on the ‘no’ side of that question.”

Wait. This was sounding like...had he just been acting like a total idiot this whole time? But then, why was she kissing him? “So you don’t...you’re not attracted to men.” God, he felt stupid.

She gave an exasperated sigh and plopped down on the bed next to him. “No. Not as a rule.” She took his hand. “But I am attracted to _you_.”

He smiled faintly and shook his head. “Ellie, I’m really confused right now.”

She was silent for a moment. “When I left here, I knew my freedom would come at a price. But a life of celibacy was something I was willing to accept, if it meant I could go on living and protect Lucy at the same time. So I just turned that part of my brain off. And most of the time it worked, and I didn’t spend every second of every day thinking about all the sex that I couldn’t have.”

It was all clear now. Now that he couldn’t be infected, he was safe for her. “So I’m your only other option,” he said. He felt sick to his stomach.

“No! You...damn it, Joel, just listen, okay?” She looked at him, her green eyes snapping with anger. “When you first came to me, I didn’t feel that way about you. But you said it yourself, we were good together. It was so easy to be with you, and the longer you stayed, the more I started noticing...things.”

“What things?”

She shrugged violently. “Things! Like, the way your arms looked when you built stuff. Or…” Her cheeks flushed, and she looked down. “the way you...your ass looked in your jeans. That night...my anniversary celebration...when you took my hands and started saying all those nice things, all I could look at was that notch at the base of your throat, and all I could think was how much I wanted to kiss it.” She drew in a deep breath. “And that’s when I knew I had to send you away, because I realized I wanted you, and I could never have you. And that hurt too much,” she finished, candidly.

Joel looked up slowly. “So…”

“So, I’m naturally attracted to women. That’s probably never going to change. But I’m attracted to you because of how you make me feel, and because of how I feel about you.”

“So, you _are_ attracted to me.” The icy knot in Joel’s stomach melted as warmth spread through his body. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she’d just told him...

“Didn’t I say that, like, twenty minutes ago?” She leaned over and gave him a short, passionate kiss with lots of tongue. “We need to work on your listening skills.”

“I’m sorry I’m such a prude,” he muttered, his voice thick with renewed desire.

She smiled against his lips. “We can work on that, too. It’ll be fun.” Her hands slipped inside his robe, seeking bare skin, and then dipped lower...

Just when things were starting to get interesting, they were interrupted by a knock on the door. Ellie snatched her hands back guiltily and straightened up. “Shit. I totally forgot. I came in here to ask if you were feeling up to seeing visitors.”

He grimaced as he looked down at the flimsy material above his crotch, still tented from beneath. “Give me a minute.”

Her wicked giggle as she let herself out of the room didn’t help matters much, but by the time he’d dragged himself back into bed and arranged his blankets, things were pretty much back to normal. Which was a good thing, because as soon as the door opened again, Lucy ran toward him at breakneck speed and clambered right onto his lap.

“Joel!” She threw her brown arms around his neck and squeezed. “You were really sick, just like me! Did you barf?”

Olivia, following behind at a more sedate pace, said, “Oh yes, he did.”

“Gross! I hate barfing.”

Joel, who didn’t remember any barfing, said, “Yeah, me too. I’m glad you’re feelin’ better, junebug.” He mussed her curls.

“Wanna see my scar?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

Proudly, she pulled her shirt up to show him the mostly-scabbed-over bite wound on her stomach, the bruises around it yellowed and faded.

“Wow. That is one impressive scar. I ain’t got any scars anywhere near as impressive as that. You and your ma--, I mean, your Auntie Ellie are very special.”

Lucy laughed at him. “Did you know that Mama Ellie is really my mama? I have two moms!” Her expression sobered. “But I can’t hug Mama Livvy now, ‘cause I’m ‘fected. ‘Cause of my bite. But you’re okay…” She trailed off, and looked to Ellie for confirmation, “Right?”

Ellie smiled. “That’s right, Lucy Lu. Joel’s been vaccinated. That means he can’t get infected. Come on, now.” She picked up her daughter from Joel’s lap and balanced her on one of her hips. “I think Joel’s a little tired, so we should let him rest. And I think it’s time for your nap.”

Lucy scowled. “I’m not even tired.” She yawned as they went out the door.

Olivia was looking after them with a sad smile on her face.

“She’ll always be yours, too,” Joel said. “You heard her. Two moms.”

Olivia turned back to him, her eyes bright. “I know. It’s just...all these years. Now I know just how Ellie felt.”

Joel nodded, then said, “So, what happens next? They can’t go back to the Chisos.”

“No. Ellie’s going to have to keep Lucy away from people until she really understands what can happen if she’s not careful. They’ll go back up to the cave together. As for me, I need to go back and tell Esteban what we learned about Project Blue. If that residue in Alpine can be turned into a reliable, viable vaccine…”

“Life gets a whole lot easier,” Joel finished.

“Yes. But we still don’t know why it worked in that form and not its aerosolized form. Or whether it’s an effective vaccine for everyone who’s exposed to it. I’ll have to run a lot of tests, and I hope Esteban will lend me the personnel to come back here and ransack the hell out of the lab. If we can make more vaccine, we may still be able to turn this whole thing around, Joel.”

Given how far everything was already gone, Joel had serious doubts about that, but he kept his opinion to himself. Who knows, maybe Olivia was right.

“What about me?”

Olivia’s smile turned mysterious. It was that knowing kind of smile women got, when they knew something you didn’t. “You should talk to Ellie.”

“Talk to me about what?” Ellie said, as she came back into the room.

“That was fast,” Joel said.

She laughed. “I don’t think it took more than a minute for her to fall asleep, once her head hit that pillow. Talk to me about what?”

Olivia smiled. “I’ll go sit with Lucy. I’ve got knitting to work on.” She slipped out the door.

“I was talkin’ to Liv about what happens next,” Joel said slowly, “She said you and Lucy were goin’ back up to the mountains, and she was goin’ back to the camp. When I asked her what I should do, she said I should talk to you.”

“Oh.” Ellie looked down, almost shyly. “She was just...I mentioned to her that I…” she bit her lip.

Joel looked at her steadily, not giving her any help.

“Agh. Okay. Do you remember when you said I didn’t need to be alone up there? And you asked if you could come back? I guess...I was wondering…I was hoping...” she was looking studiously at her toes. “...do you still...want to?”

“Are you askin’ me to move in with you? Because I think that’s maybe movin’ a little fast. I'm kind of a prude, you know. We should spend a couple months courtin’ first, and then maybe we can talk about movin’ in together.” He couldn’t control the grin that was spreading across his face.

Ellie let out her breath with a smile and moved over to the bed to sit beside him. “You…” She leaned over and kissed him heatedly. “Are such a jerk.”

He laughed against her lips and kissed her back. “But you love me.”

She froze for a second, then relaxed against him, her hip resting next to his and her chest pressed up against him. “Yeah, I love you,” she murmured.

Joel wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. He whispered against her ear, too quietly for anyone but her to hear, “I love you, Ellie.”He kissed the edge of her ear, and then said in a low voice, "I ain't too tired. Why don't you tell me more about Charlotte Prince?" 

"Oh, Joel," said Ellie with a smile. "There's so much to tell."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Olivia is a knitter, but she left all her needles and yarn in Roswell when she escaped with Ellie. She was really glad to get them back. 
> 
> Again, this chapter has a lot of SCIENCE™. I’m not a doctor, immunologist, pathologist, biologist, or mycologist. What I am is a writer with access to the internet (specifically, Wikipedia and the NHS website, which have very informative articles on the immune system and vaccines). That said, vaccines are still kind of like wonderful space magic to me. I hope the medicine in this story is at least plausible. If not, all the fault is my own.
> 
> Yes, “Casey” is Bill. I don’t have a backstory for how he ended up in the Chisos too, but there everyone calls him by his last name and he and Esteban are happily partnered.
> 
> Olivia is named after my friend, Oli. She is super awesome. Happy graduation, Oli!
> 
> Even though this is an AU and there’s no Riley, I didn’t want to just ignore Ellie’s queerness, as established by Left Behind. But since Ellie and Joel just do a lot of dancing around the subject of sex and their attraction to each other until the final chapter, I didn’t bring it up until then. This version of Ellie is bisexual, strongly leaning toward lesbian. She has gone from a liberal upbringing with her parents, where she was comfortable identifying as gay as a teenager, to the CDC/FEDRA program, where promiscuous behavior was encouraged (for SCIENCE™!). After leaving the program she bears her cross of celibacy like a martyr, but the only way she can really do it is to try not to think of herself as a sexual being at all. Her growing feelings for Joel start to crack that facade early on, but once she knows for sure that she can have sex without any unwanted consequences (like killing her partner), it’s like a dam has burst, and every second of pent up sexual frustration from those years of celibacy comes rushing out. That’s why she’s so different and open to talking to Joel about it in the last chapter, as opposed to the rest of the story, when there's no point in talking about it.
> 
> This version of Joel grew up very straight and very conservative, in a fundamentalist Christian family. He’s a simple guy, and he has no idea what to do with Ellie’s sexual liberation. But he’s going to try his best to enjoy it. I was really entertained by the idea of Ellie being more sexually adventurous and experienced than Joel in this story.
> 
> Many, many thanks to R_W_Daniels (and Michelle!) and Luciferine, founding members of the AO3 Comment / Tumblr Inbox writer's workshop, for your many helpful suggestions, comments, feedback, idea-bouncing, and just general camaraderie. Making friends like y'all make doing this worthwhile.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on a prompt from one of my Tumblr followers. It was going to be a short one-shot, but as I wrote it, I just had too many questions about this version of Joel and Ellie that needed answering. So it has become a longer adventure story, with some romance thrown in too.


End file.
